Lighthouse Christmas
by chai4anne
Summary: It's Christmas at the lighthouse Josh and Donna bought in Maine. While Donna waits for Josh to arrive for the holiday, their eight-year-old son makes a plan that causes all kinds of trouble. . . .
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: Years ago I wrote a story called "The Maine Thing," which was set in a village on the coast of Maine. I was surprised when several people asked me afterwards if I'd write an epilogue for it. They wanted to know whether Josh and Donna actually bought the lighthouse that's for sale at the end of the story, which of the jobs he was offered Josh decided to take, and whether Josh and Donna really did get married and have children.

I could never think of anything to write. Of course, they bought the lighthouse, got married, and had kids. Naturally, Josh went back to D.C. and did something satisfying and influential in politics. But I couldn't think of a story to write about that.

And then, last month, my friend Mistletoe sent me pictures of a truly beautiful gingerbread house she had just made, modeled on the Portland Head lighthouse in Maine. And that made me wonder what Christmas would be like in Josh and Donna's lighthouse in Maine. Why this particular story should be the result, though, I have no idea. It's quite a departure from my usual thing.

You should be able to follow this if you haven't read "The Maine Thing," though parts of it will probably make more sense if you have.

For once in my life, I'm going to start posting before I've actually written the whole story. It's all worked out, though, and I _will _finish it over the next few weeks, I promise. Unless, of course, you let me know by your resounding silence that it isn't worth finishing, in which case I'll delete this chapter and try to pretend I never wrote it.

Feedback is the best Christmas present possible.

Lighthouse Christmas

By Chai

Lights twinkled all through the little house by the sea. Donna looked around with pleasure. The mantel in the snug living room was draped with balsam and the garlands of cranberries and popcorn she and the children had finished stringing just that afternoon. A fire crackled cheerfully behind a glass-doored firescreen on the hearth, and candles flickered on the windowsills.

They were electric candles, not real ones, but they had heavy brass sticks that were much more convincing than the ordinary sort of plastic window-candles Donna had grown up with, and they were—like the glass firescreen—a gift from her mother-in-law, who was sitting by the fireplace playing a noisy game of Parcheesi with Noah, Sally, and Donna's father. Donna's mother was working on her embroidery and inserting occasional comments about the game. Behind them the Christmas tree glowed like a feathery star.

Watching her family, Donna was overcome by the thought of how lucky she was. She had two beautiful children. She had both her parents with her for Christmas. She had a mother-in-law who had welcomed her with open arms and had told her, when Donna asked her before that first Christmas they were married, that she would have no trouble whatever seeing her grandchildren brought up with Donna's traditions as well as her own. She had a husband she loved with every fiber of her being, and who she knew loved her back more fiercely and passionately and protectively than she had ever imagined any man could. She could look back and laugh now, when she remembered all those years when she'd thought she was alone in feeling the way she did, when she'd wondered if he really cared anything for her at all, or if he ever would.

And if the last year had changed almost everything else about their lives, she knew that it hadn't changed _that. _Or _this_. Whatever else they had lost or gained—and to Donna it often felt more like loss than anything else—they still had this place that both of them loved, where once in a while, if things were going well, they could tuck themselves in away from the world and worry about nothing (well, Donna at least could worry about nothing) except what the weather was doing, and if there was enough hot chocolate and macaroni-and-cheese in the pantry to keep the children happy until the next trip to the village shops.

Donna smiled. Outside, the early, eastern darkness had fallen, but in the light that was spilling out of the living room windows she could see snowflakes dancing gently. The wind that had been howling in the chimney and beating solid sheets of snow against the house all day was dying down at last. Josh would have no trouble getting there safely tomorrow afternoon.

They'd watch the children hang their stockings, and tuck them into bed. And then they'd leave them in their grandparents' care and go out for dinner together, to the special place they always came back to on that day every year. No matter how many other changes they'd had to make in their lives this past year, that was one thing she knew Josh would never change if he could help it. He'd move heaven and earth to make sure he was here for that. And once Josh was here, nothing else would really matter.

Watching her children playing with their grandparents, Donna couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so at peace with everything, so perfectly contented.

000000

Like most perfect moments, of course, Donna's didn't last long. An hour after dinner she was locked in an all-out battle of wills with her eight-year-old son.

"No, Noah, I'm sorry," she said for what felt like the twentieth time. "We're not going to see Santa tomorrow. We're going to stay here and wait for Daddy. You and Sally can play outside in the snow."

"But it's Christmas Eve. We _always _go on Christmas Eve!"

"We're not going this year."

"Why _not? _We _have _to go, we _have _to! Say yes, Mommy, say _yes!_"

Donna wanted desperately to say yes.

She loved the ritual as much as Noah did: the crisp December air; the snow, when they were lucky and there was some—and there would certainly be plenty underfoot tomorrow; the shop windows in the village bright with lights and colorful with toys and small luxuries. The bakery's display of gingerbread and bûches-de-Noël was as big a draw as the toy store: they always went in and got cookies and hot chocolate before joining the long line of other families stamping their feet against the cold as they waited for a last-possible-minute visit with Santa, ensconced in all his scarlet splendor in the bandstand in the little park.

This might be the last year that Noah would actually believe that Santa could be there in the village after lunch, and still get back to the North Pole in time to fulfill all those last-minute orders, harness his reindeer, and fly off to deliver presents by jumping down chimneys all over the world in a single night.

If, in fact, Noah still believed that at all. Donna had wondered for a while now if he hadn't figured it out long ago, and had just been keeping up the pretense of believing because he was afraid he wouldn't get the presents if he didn't. Or because he thought it would spoil things for her if she knew he knew. He was an unnervingly intelligent and complicated eight-year-old—which shouldn't have surprised anyone, given who his father was, but often did.

"We _have _to go!"

"No, sweetheart. I'm so sorry, but we can't. Really."

"_Why _can't we? We _always _go. _Always._"

Donna looked at him helplessly. No matter how advanced he might be in some ways, he was still a little boy in others. He really was too young—perhaps not to understand the reason why they couldn't go to see Santa, but to _have _to understand it. She wanted to protect him from that for a while longer—for as long as she possibly could.

"We'll do fun things here. Granny and Grandma want to make cookies with you. Hannukah stars and gingerbread men. There's the snow to play in with Sally. And Daddy will be coming. We have to be here when Daddy comes!"

"Will _he _take me to Santa, then?"

Donna bit her lip. The temptation to make Josh be the one to say the final no was great. It wasn't fair to get Noah's hopes up, though.

"No, sweetheart. I'm sorry. Sally, what _are _you doing up again? Noah, finish your hot chocolate, and come and get ready for your bath."

She turned her back on him purposefully, and led his little sister off to be put back to bed. Noah gave his mother a baleful look, and sipped his hot chocolate as slowly as possible, swinging his legs angrily and giving the kitchen table regular, resentful kicks. After a minute or two, though, his legs began to swing more slowly. Then they stopped. He put his mug down with two sips of perfectly good chocolate left in it. His whole attention was focused on the bulletin board in front of him.

One of the papers tacked to the board was a schedule. Even here, on vacation, Donna liked to keep track of things-including who around her was supposed to be where, when.

There were a lot of names on the schedule. Noah knew all the people attached to the names. And because he listened when people didn't think he was listening, he knew that the two he privately thought of as Calvin and Hobbes often drove into the village when their shift at the lighthouse was up. It was up at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon.

For a moment he thought about asking them to take him with them—he liked them better than most of the others, which was why he'd given them names from the books he and his father loved to read together. But he dismissed the idea almost at once as worthy only of someone Sally's age. If his mother wouldn't take him to the village, Calvin and Hobbes certainly wouldn't.

Still, the schedule had given him the beginnings of an idea. By the time he'd finished his bath, he had more than the beginnings, he had a full-fledged plan.

He lay awake a long time, going over the details in his mind and refining them. When he was finally satisfied that he had everything worked out, he fell asleep, smiling.

His mother checked on him before she went to bed, and was glad to see him looking so happy again. "He's forgotten all about it," she thought. Half an hour later, she fell asleep smiling, too.

Eight hundred miles away in Washington, thinking about seeing his family tomorrow, so did Josh.

oooooo

To be continued. . . .


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: My apologies for the wait, guys. I'm afraid this chapter doesn't advance the story all that much, either, but if you stick with me, I hope it will pick up a bit in the next one. Don't expect too much, though-this is just a silly bit of future-fic, and AU future-fic at that.

Chapter 2:

Noah spent the next morning playing outside with Sally and Gressie, their big black Labradoodle, in the snow. The children dragged their sleds up the long slope to the crest of the hill behind the lighthouse and the keeper's cottage, and tobogganed down again and again.

Noah chose a different route for them every time. He made sure they sledded the other way, into the dip behind the crest where the new buildings had been built out of sight of the house, at least as often as they took the longer run towards the lighthouse and the cottage. Gressie danced around them wherever they went, barking joyfully. By lunchtime most of the promontory the lighthouse stood on was a smooth white field no longer, but wildly criss-crossed with footprints and toboggan tracks. Noah looked back at it with satisfaction as his mother called them in. Then he followed Sally into the lean-to shed off the kitchen, where they stored their sleds and took their boots off before going into the house.

Grandma Lyman had made his favorite lunch: chicken-noodle soup and peanut butter sandwiches. He golloped them down, as she was expecting, but surprised her by shaking his head when she asked if he wanted seconds.

"We're going outside again," he announced. Five-year-old Sally, who could be counted on to follow her brother around worshipfully and do anything he wanted, nodded and slid off her chair. Watching Noah help her climb into her snow things, Donna thought how unusually good he was being with his little sister today.

The children didn't stay out long this time. Only half an hour later the grandmothers, sitting with their knitting in the living room, heard Sally's voice calling, "Hurry up, Noah!" The kitchen door slammed once, then twice. A volley of giggling followed, accompanied by wild barking and stampeding feet apparently tearing through the kitchen into the tiny front entryway and up the stairs.

The older women smiled at each other and went back to their knitting.

Holed up in the master bedroom, where she was trying to finish off some last-minute wrapping, Donna smiled too. The children really were getting along so well this vacation. It was going to be a good Christmas. As long as nothing happened to keep Josh from getting away that afternoon, and the weather held until he was safely home with them, it might even be one of their best.

oooooo

_Washington, D.C.: 4:00 p.m._

In Washington, things were going well. Josh's meetings had finished more or less on time. Margaret had brought him coffee and a turkey sandwich packed with stuffing and cranberry sauce, and-in spite of the promise he was sure she'd made to Donna-hadn't even tried to foist a salad on him with it. He had just opened a bottle of Glenfiddich and poured out glasses for Toby, Sam, Danny and C.J., who had dropped over after finishing off some pre-holiday business in her office at State.

Looking around at his friends, Josh thought how impossibly lucky he was. A little over nine years ago he'd thought his life in Washington was over. He'd thought his life anywhere was over, and all that was left for him was friendlessness and poverty and-after the scandal that had brought his political career to a screaming halt-shame.

And now he was sitting in an office in the White House again, doing the work he loved best, work that had always been like bread and meat and _air _to him, and doing it with the people who meant more to him than anyone else in the world-except Donna, of course, and his children, and his mother. And Leo and President Bartlet. And while those senior statesmen might not actually be there with him physically, both of them always insisted whenever he talked to them that they were there with him in spirit.

Which in itself was still enough to amaze him. He didn't do a lot of looking back anymore, but once in a while he couldn't help remembering that when Leo had had that heart attack he had told the President to give his job to C.J., not Josh, and the President had done it. Josh had thought then that they didn't trust him anymore, which had hurt more than he'd ever been willing to let on. And then there had been the time when Cliff Calley had stirred up all that trouble, and Josh had taken the hit so Donna wouldn't have to, and Jed and Leo had actually believed Josh had done those things and had turned their backs on him-he'd thought, forever. That had been one of the hardest things he'd ever had to take-harder even than prison itself, and that had been every bit as difficult to get through as Josh had expected it to be.

Of course, if it hadn't been for all that, he would never have been sitting here, in this office, doing this work with these people he loved now. Josh understood many things about himself these days that he hadn't once, and one of them was how much those long months he had spent in prison-which had seemed like the end of everything at the time-had turned out to be a good thing for him in the end.

Going to prison had changed him in ways he'd needed to be changed, he thought now. It had been a humiliating experience, but he knew he'd learned valuable things from it: humility, for one. Not that he'd ever been the egotist some people had thought him-he'd been far too hard on himself for that-but he knew that he'd often acted egotistically, sometimes as a kind of blustery show to keep anyone from guessing what he was really feeling, and sometimes without actually meaning to at all. He didn't like remembering those moments now.

He'd learned things from the time after prison, too, when he'd done his parole in that little fishing village in Maine. He'd learned about financial stress, and hard physical work, and the grit and courage it took to meet those things day after day after day without giving up. He'd learned to respect and love the ordinary men and women he'd met there, who met those challenges cheerfully every day. They were men and women he'd never have known if Cliff Calley hadn't gone after him and he hadn't lost his political career and gone to jail. That fact had given him a lot of food for thought in the years since.

Curiously enough, he had earned their affection and respect, too. In some ways that was harder for him to believe than almost anything else that had happened to him, though he'd been shown again and again over the past few years that it was true. He'd never be in this job now if it weren't.

He didn't think he'd be in this job now without those few months working for President Vinick after his name had been cleared, either. That was something else he never would have imagined himself doing, working for a Republican, but the President had asked him, and Josh believed that when the President of your country asks you to help him you don't say no, even if he is from the party you've detested all your life. Vinick was a moderate Republican, of course-Josh didn't think he could have brought himself to work for him, President or no, if he'd been seriously right-wing. But then, if he'd been seriously right-wing, he never would have asked Josh to.

Josh knew he'd learned a lot from those few months as Vinick's free-lance political advisor. Among other things, he'd gained a greater understanding of where ordinary Republicans were coming from-_why _they thought the way they did-and a greater patience with at least some of their ideas. It had helped him immeasurably in his career since.

And what a career it had been. If you had asked Josh, during his years as Bartlet's Deputy C.o.S., what he thought he would do with the rest of his life after Bartlet left office, he would never have pictured anything like what he'd actually done. The climax of his conflict with Cliff Calley, captured on that webcam that night in August nine years ago, had catapulted him into a degree of fame and fortune he could never have anticipated-and would actually never have chosen, if he'd been given a choice. But he hadn't been given a choice, at least about the fame. And after that, it wouldn't have made much sense to turn down the opportunities that came his way to make the fortune. He could hardly have married Donna and raised a family if he'd still been flat-out broke and living on a meal and a half a day.

So there'd been the movie, which had turned out to be a surprisingly good one, and had broken box-office records and garnered considerable critical acclaim when it was released. The inevitable speaking engagements had followed, most of them surprisingly well-paid. Matt Santos had approached him and asked him to run his campaign against Vinick again; Josh had thought about it, but finally said no. He told Donna he'd been in enough campaigns to last him the rest of his life; he didn't want to give up his time with her and with Noah. She'd been more pleased than she wanted to let him see. Somewhere inside her she suspected that he might not always feel the same way, and she loved him too much to want to say anything that would make it hard for him to tell her if he changed his mind and wanted to go back to campaigning in the future.

And then there been the night the governor of Maine had asked him to accept the Senate seat that had just opened up when the junior Maine senator had been forced to resign after making a fool of himself in a prostitution scandal midway through his term. Josh had been taken completely by surprise: he'd had no idea he was even being considered for the job. But Jed Bartlet was an old friend of the governor's, and he and Leo still had tremendous pull in the party.

His new colleagues on the Hill were surprised to find Senator Lyman a quieter, more mature man than the brash, impulsive youth who'd annoyed them so many times in his years as Bartlet's bulldog. Josh had been surprised, too, by how much he enjoyed the work. He'd always thought of himself as what Jed Bartlet had called him once-the guy who wanted to help the guy in charge, not the guy who wanted to _be _in charge. The Senate had suited him well, though: he'd been able to use his old skills of negotiation together with his newly-gained understanding and respect for different kinds of people to take a leading role in passing some important legislation right from the start.

Josh could easily have spent the rest of his life in that job, though the idea of having to run for it in an actual election held very little appeal for him. He had no desire to have anything to do with political campaigns again. But then, one summer night, Sam had come to Maine-it was August, and Congress was on vacation-to talk to him. He'd been followed by Toby. And then Leo and Jed Bartlet, and Josh had never been able to say no to either of them.

And now here he was, back in this familiar office in the White House. There were Christmas garlands in the windows, and a menorah on one of the sills. Set out on a side table was a curiously carved chess set, a gift from President Bartlet. And hanging across from his desk was the painting of a ship that Leo had always had hanging across from his desk. Josh had asked him for it; he liked working in the face of that reminder of everything Leo had stood for, everything he'd done.

It was a room full of symbols. But the best symbol of all was the group of faces in front of him now. Sam. Toby. Danny. C.J. The best friends, the best help, a man could ever have.

Josh took a deep breath, but his hand still shook just a little as he raised his glass.

"I'm not much good at speeches," he started. His friends burst into laughter.

"Maybe once you weren't," C.J. said. "There _was _that secret plan to fight inflation."

Josh grinned. "I'm still working on that one," he said. "I'm expecting to get it solved, too. After all, we've got the best people in this room that any White House could ever have. And we're not exactly new at this; we've done it before. Twice before. We've got three more years, and what I want, more than anything in the world, is to make sure we do this right. So I just wanted to say-thank you for being willing to do it with me. There's no way in the world I could do this without you."

Sam beamed at his old friend, his heart almost bursting with pride. Toby glowered and looked at the floor, hoping to cover the way his eyes were starting to water. C.J. didn't even try to hide what was happening to hers. She brushed the tears away, gave Josh her megawatt smile, and said, "Always, mi amor." And then she blushed, and corrected herself: "I mean-sir. I mean-"

But she was cut off by the phone on Josh's desk ringing. Josh sighed and reached to pick it up. His hand was still in the air when Margaret opened the door, anxiety written all over her face, and Ron Butterfield rushed in.

To be continued. . . .


	3. Chapter 3

"How long?" Josh's knuckles were white on the back of his chair. Very faintly, in the distance, he heard sirens. He ignored them.

"It's been three hours. They went outside to sled after lunch. Their agents watched from a distance, as usual. They all reported the children taking their last run together and going into the house at 12:51 through the side entrance."

"The shed?"

"Yes. Mrs. Moss and Mrs. Lyman Senior were in the living room; they heard the children come in. Or at least, they heard Sally calling to Noah to hurry up and come in, and then heard feet running, the dog barking, laughter."

"Gressie was with them?"

"Yes."

"How was she barking?"

"Playfully, Mrs. Moss said. Nothing to suggest a cause for alarm. The agent by the front door heard it as well, and said he thought the children and the dog were chasing each other through the house."

"And Donna?"

"Was upstairs in your bedroom, wrapping gifts, with the door closed. She says she thought she heard the children and the dog run upstairs. They were making a lot of noise. Then things quieted down. She thought they were playing a game together in Sally's room. She didn't go to check on them."

"Of course not." Josh made an impatient gesture. He wasn't going down that road; whatever had happened-and he still could not allow himself to think that anything _had _happened-it was not Donna's fault. "She was busy. They were safe inside. Only-they weren't."

"Sally's safe and fine, sir."

"What does she say happened?"

"That Noah was behind her. She didn't see him come into the house. She ran in from the shed through the side door into the kitchen, then upstairs to her room. She was there the rest of the afternoon, playing by herself."

"So all that noise was just Sally and the dog?"

"Yes, sir."

"When did she last see him?"

"She says outside, before she went into the kitchen.

Josh took a deep breath to steady his voice.

"So-_where is Noah?_"

"We don't know sir. There's no evidence at all of any kind of invasion. The outer perimeter was secured. There'd been a fresh fall of snow in the night; there are no tracks inside the perimeter fence except the agents'."

"What about the interior fence?"

Ron shook his head. "There's no sign of a breach. And no footprints anywhere near that fence, either, except the agents'."

The property Josh and Donna had bought nine years before had included 25 acres of land. They'd added to that from time to time as adjoining acreage came up for sale, so they now owned a considerable parcel of land that extended along the waterfront on either side of the promontory the lighthouse was built on, and back to the road, which was about a mile and a half from the lighthouse and the adjoining keeper's house where the family stayed when they were in residence. The Secret Service had built an exterior perimeter fence around the entire property, and manned it at regular intervals to ensure security. But there was another, lower, fence around the edge of the promontory, that Josh and Donna had put in themselves when Noah was small, to keep him from toddling over the top of the cliff.

An intruder or intruders could, in theory, climb into the compound over that fence, but they would have to climb the cliff first. And before doing that, they'd have to breach the Secret Service's security line at the edges of the property and the base of the cliff. Anyone attempting to reach the property by boat would be stopped by the Secret Service's marine unit or the Coast Guard while they were still well out from shore. Even supposing someone managed to get through those layers of security, they'd still be seen by the agents who patrolled the inner fence along the top of the cliff, or the ones with the surveillance equipment and the snipers' rifles at the top of the tower.

The lighthouse was supposed to be impregnable. It was, after all, the vacation home of the President of the United States.

"You've searched thoroughly? He couldn't be hiding anywhere?"

"We've searched everywhere, sir. The house. The lighthouse tower. The Service buildings behind the crest. Noah's footprints are all over the field behind the house, and down in the dip behind the crest, too-they were sledding in both directions this morning. They go right up to the edge of the Service buildings, along with Sally's and the dog's. But there's no indication he went anywhere else at all."

"Are you _sure _he couldn't have gone-" Josh took a deep breath, and moistened his lips. His mouth was as dry as sandpaper. "-Over the cliff?"

"His agents were watching the whole time."

"Well, _where the hell is my son, then? _God damn it, I thought you people had made changes after-" Josh couldn't get Zoey's name out. "I thought you knew what you were _doing!"_

Ron blinked. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. Josh wiped his hand across his forehead and through his hair.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, after a moment. "I didn't mean that, Ron. I'm sorry."

"That's all right, sir. I understand."

"I thought you could track them?"

Ron sighed.

"You know the tracking devices are removable."

Josh nodded, his mouth suddenly too dry to speak. The children had been microchipped years ago, but that wouldn't make much difference now. As Ron had pointed out in their initial security briefing, no one kidnapping a Presidential child would be interested in disguising their identity. The Service used electronic transmitters to track the whereabouts of their protectees, but they weren't implanted-you had to be able to change the batteries, and anyway, a successful kidnapper would presumably have no difficulty locating an implanted tracking device, and no scruples about ripping it out of a child's skin. The children's devices were in their watches, new ones that they'd helped pick out so they wouldn't object to wearing them.

"One of my men found Noah's watch in the shed, under the edge of the woodpile."

Josh's mouth was a fine white line.

"And now?"

"I'm afraid we have to consider the possibility that one of my agents-"

The two men's eyes locked. Josh nodded slowly. Somehow he managed to loosen his jaw enough to grind out the question, "How will you find out?"

"I'm flying up there now to take over the investigation myself."

"You can come with me on Air Force One."

"No, sir. You can't go. If I've got a turncoat up there, it's too great a security risk."

To be cont'd. . . .


	4. Chapter 4

Lighthouse Christmas Chapter 4:

Author's Note: Since this whole thing is such a total AU fantasy anyway, I decided I might as well go ahead and resurrect one of my favorite characters. So, in this revisionist version of West Wing history, Admiral Fitzwallace was injured but not killed at Gaza. He made a full recovery and, at Josh's request, has returned from his retirement to take up his position as head of the Joint Chiefs again. Nancy McNally's still around somewhere, too, though I don't think she's going to put in an appearance in this story.

In case you're wondering, Sam is C.o.S., Toby has agreed to be Communications Director again, Danny is Press Secretary, and C.J. is Secretary of State. Margaret, obviously, has become Josh's secretary. (Zoey is helping Donna in the First Lady's office, and is married to Charlie, who's an Assistant White House Counsel. Josh likes to keep his friends around him. And Sam has married Ainsley, who's busy lawyering on the Hill. I'm not doing anything with any of those characters in this story, or probably any other, either, but it's fun to think about!)

Oh, and my thanks to Arpad Hrunta for the image of Josh as Pierre Trudeau doing his "gunslinger" thing. I laughed when he first mentioned it, but then I remembered that Josh really does do something like that sometimes. . . .

Feedback makes a really nice New Year's present, too. . . .

Chapter 4:

Josh laughed. It wasn't a friendly sound. Sam, Toby, Danny, and C.J. exchanged worried glances. They were still in shock themselves from what they'd heard; they had no idea how Josh was going to take it.

"You don't actually think you're going to keep me away, do you?" Josh had his jacket thrust back and his hands on his hips-like a gunfighter in a western, C.J. thought, or Pierre Trudeau in those old photos of the charismatic Canadian Prime Minister facing down a hostile opponent after his return to power in the early 80's.

"Sir-"

"You'd better not be imagining that my family's safety is somehow less important than mine."

"Sir, if you're there, you're a target. That won't make your family any safer. You know the threats we've been getting."

"Apparently my family is already a target."

"I can't let you go, sir. This building is in lockdown."

"I'll unlock it."

"Jo-Mr. President," Sam broke in. "Your safety has to come first. The American people-"

"For God's sake, Sam!" Josh spun around. He was breathing hard. "The American people knew _exactly_ what they were getting when they voted me into this office. After all that publicity, after the Calley thing, I didn't have a secret left to hide. We ran on that. Anyone who thinks I _wouldn't _be rushing to Donna and my children right now must have their head buried so deep in the sand we should be sending in FEMA to dig them out, if they aren't so brain-damaged already it wouldn't be worth it. No, Toby"-Toby had cleared his throat-"don't even try to talk me out of this. I'm getting on Marine One-it's out there on the lawn right now, waiting for me-and flying to Andrews, and then I'm getting on Air Force One and flying to Maine. And if any of you even try to stop me, I'll fire you. That includes you, Butterfield. I'll call in the Joint Chiefs and order in the Marines to secure this house and my home in Maine against your rogue agents who may have kidnapped my son. Come to think of it, that's what I should be doing anyway. _Margaret!_" Margaret appeared in the doorway. "Get me Fitzwallace on the phone."

Ron Butterfield sighed.

"Actually, Mr. President, that was the next thing I was going to request."

Josh paused halfway across the room and looked back, a wave of surprise washing some of the tense lines from his face.

"You were going to _ask _me to get the Marines to take over from the Service?"

"We have protocols to cover every possible situation, sir. Even this one."

000000

Margaret was still hovering agitatedly in the doorway.

"I'll call the Admiral right away, Mr. President," she said. "But could you talk to Donna first? She's been waiting a long time."

"_Donna's _been _waiting_? Why didn't you tell me before? Put her through!"

Sam ushered the others out. As they were leaving, Josh was picking up the phone. They all heard the break in his voice as he said, "Sweetheart? I'm so sorry. . . ."

Danny put an arm around C.J.; she was shaking. Toby didn't want to look at Sam's face, so he looked at his hands instead and twisted Andie's ring. They were together again now, had been since the twins turned two. He remembered the time he'd lost one of them at Hecht's. He'd turned around and Huck was gone. It had been less than five minutes before he'd been found again, but it had felt like a lifetime.

The four of them clustered together in Sam's office, knowing they should be doing something-drafting statements, making press releases-but waiting so they could talk to Josh again first. It was different than it had been with Jed Bartlet. They were Josh's staff, but they'd been his friends first, and they were his friends first now. What mattered most was making sure he was all right. Press statements could come later.

Sam had left the door to Oval a little ajar. They all heard Josh's voice rise.

"The agents said they were doing _what?!_"

And then, in a completely different voice, excited and almost-but this was impossible, surely-happy:

"Donna, put Sally on the phone."

Sam stepped over to close the door, but Josh saw him and waved him in. C.J., Danny, and Toby looked at each other, and settled down to wait.

000000

Donna wiped her eyes. She'd been holding herself together all afternoon for Sally's sake, and her mother's, and maybe most of all for her mother-in-law's, but when she'd heard Josh's voice, after that long wait on hold, she'd come apart.

"I should have checked on them," she sobbed. "I shouldn't have just assumed they were all right."

"Donna, it's not your fault," Josh said. "Of course you didn't check on them. I wouldn't have, either."

"It _is _my fault! It has to be! I should have known it was just Sally coming upstairs. She was making such a noise, laughing and talking-to Gressie, I guess-and stomping so loudly. I've never heard her make such a row all by herself; she must have been wound up from all that sledding. But I should have realized I wasn't hearing Noah's voice, too; I should have gone to see."

"How is she doing now?

"She won't talk to me. The agents upset her, asking all those questions, and she's shut herself in her room and screams at me when I try to come in. I think she thinks it's her fault, because she didn't realize Noah wasn't behind her. They must have taken him from the _shed, _Josh! His coat's there, and his hat, and scarf-it's so cold out and he doesn't have them, he'll be _cold_-"

"He'll be all right," Josh said. "Don't worry about that, Donna. He'll be warm enough. He'll be all right."

He knew exactly how empty the words sounded, but they were all he could think of to say.

And yet something was jiggling at the back of his mind, telling him that there was something else he should be saying. Something he should be asking about. Something Donna had said, about Sally. And before that, something Ron had said. . . .

"I'm sorry," Donna sobbed incoherently. "I'm so sorry!"

"It's _not your fault, _Donna. Don't ever think that. Tell me what happened. Tell me everything."

He didn't know how it could make any difference, but he hoped it would help Donna to tell it to him. And there was that feeling still, that there was something in the story as he'd heard it so far that hadn't quite added up.

"You know what happened."

"Only what Ron told me. I need to know what you know."

Donna took a deep breath, and choked back her sobs. Somehow it helped to hear that Josh needed her to do something.

"Noah and Sally went outside after breakfast. And I was so happy, because Noah seemed happy, and he'd been so unhappy last night." She sniffled a little on that, and Josh intervened hurriedly.

"Noah was unhappy? Why?"

"He asked about going to see Santa today, and when I said we couldn't, he got upset."

"He got upset about not seeing Santa? _Noah _did?"

"Yes, I was surprised. I'd been thinking he must have figured it out by now, but he was so insistent about going that I realized I'd been wrong. If it had been Sally-but she never even asked about it. She'd probably forgotten, or maybe she just assumed we'd be going and didn't think to ask. She was in bed when Noah brought it up. Oh, Josh. He's such a little boy still. And he must be so frightened right now-"

Josh squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the pictures that were swimming before them. His little boy in the hands of a rogue Secret Service agent. Or whatever terrorists the bastard had handed him over to. . . .

He shook himself. _Concentrate, Lyman_. _You've got to stay focused. _What had Donna just said? There was something wrong there, too. This whole thing was full of strange disconnections that he couldn't quite make sense of.

Then he remembered what she'd said.

"Donna, Noah hasn't believed in Santa Claus since kindergarten."

Probably nothing could have broken through the mesmerizing haze of fear in Donna's mind quite as effectively as that.

"_What?" _she gasped. "Of course he has!"

"He really hasn't."

"How do you _know?"_

"We talk. I know. No, I didn't tell him-he put two and two together, years ago. But he knows you don't want him to grow up too fast, so he didn't want to let you know he knew."

"I can't believe you didn't tell me."

"I knew you'd be sad about it."

"But, Josh-" Donna's mind felt sharper, as if this smaller crisis had cleared it somehow, and left it better able to think about the larger one, "if Noah _doesn't _believe in Santa anymore, why did he want to see him so badly?"

"I don't know, but he must have had some reason. Look, Donna, is there any way he could have gotten past the agents to get to the village himself?"

Donna's heart leapt up, but only for a moment.

"I don't see how. The agents were watching the children the whole time. They all said they saw the two of them sledding down the hill together, that last time. They were sharing a sled-Noah was giving Sally a piggyback down the hill-"

"They were doing _what?!"_

The _something _that had been jiggling at the back of Josh's mind ever since Ron had said the agents had seen the kids _taking their last run together _stopped jiggling and fell into place. An adrenaline-fuelled excitement began to bubble up through his veins.

"Donna," he said, "put Sally on the phone."

To be cont'd. . . .


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5:

Author's Note: Posting this chapter late last night was a bad idea. There's at least one obvious discontinuity that I've found now: in Chapter 3 I had Ron say that Gressie, the dog (and yes, you'll find out why she's got such a weird name) had stayed inside after lunch; in this chapter it turns out to be crucial that Gressie was actually outside. (I KNEW there was a reason why I always used to finish a story before I began to post. . . .)

So, I've gone back and changed that line in Chapter 3. I have a feeling there are other discontinuities lurking in this story, just waiting to embarrass me. I'll deal with them the same way as I find them. My apologies for making mistakes and correcting them as I go like this. Posting before I'd finished was an experiment I thought might be fun, but I don't think I'll try to write on the fly like this again.

I've gathered from private messages that some people have found the timeline and the security arrangements confusing. I'll try to find a way to go back and make them clearer in the text, but for now, let me explain: The agents don't go into the house themselves, just as they don't go into the parts of the White House where the family actually lives. So, as far as they were concerned, Noah was secure once he went into the house (or, once they thought he'd gone into the house). They also have surveillance equipment that keeps track of where he and Sally are, but that depends on the children keeping their special watches on, the way they've been told to. The equipment wouldn't make ultra-fine distinctions: Noah's watch has been sending out its signal from the shed, but it could just as easily be in the kitchen, or upstairs in his room.

So, the agents checked Noah and Sally off as "secure" once they went inside at 12:51. Donna was busy wrapping presents, and didn't go looking for them until shortly before 4:00. When she can't find Noah anywhere in the house, she alerts the agents, who immediately notify Ron Butterfield and, of course, start all the alerts and procedures we would expect. (More about that in a later chapter. . . .) The point is that no, I didn't mean to imply that they missed him right away and then waited three hours to notify Ron Butterfield or Josh. The scene between Ron and Josh takes place only minutes after the agents in Maine have first realized they can't locate Noah.

And this next one takes place:

_Several hours earlier (December 24, 1:15 p.m. Crabapple Cove, Maine):_

Noah was trying to breathe as quietly as possible. He didn't _think _he could be heard over the Suburban's engine, but he didn't want to take a chance on it.

He was also trying to keep track of the time by counting: "One one-hundred, two one-hundred, three one-hundred. . . ." This was boring, but better than wondering when they were going to get there. At least, that had been the plan. It was only about a ten-minute drive from the lighthouse to the village. By his count, they should have gotten there by now. But the SUV was still rumbling down the highway at the same pace it had been all along.

Noah wished he'd brought a watch, but he didn't have a normal watch anymore, just the one the agents had fixed to keep track of where he was. It would have spoiled everything if he'd brought that along. He'd ditched it in the shed, poking it under the edge of the woodpile, where he'd be able to get it back later. He would have loved to have lost it permanently, but he knew he'd never be able to get away with that.

He wasn't supposed to know that the Service had fixed that watch to keep track of him. There were a lot of things he wasn't supposed to know that he did know. He wondered sometimes why so many grownups just assumed that kids couldn't understand anything except kid stuff.

Daddy wasn't like that, of course, but he was off in Washington. Mommy was the best mother in the world, but Noah had figured out long ago that it was best if she didn't realize just how much he knew.

It worried her when he seemed to understand too much about things she thought he shouldn't know yet: where babies came from, or how to calculate the distance between Earth and Mars while watching the Mars Rover land. (Note the time delay of ten minutes before the signals reach Earth; remember from an article in the kids' version of _National Geographic _that light can travel around the Earth seven times a second; work out the circumference of the Earth using the map of the world over your bed; do the math.)

Her eyes would get wide, and then her forehead would scrunch up, and afterwards he'd hear her telling Daddy about it in a worried-sounding voice. He'd asked Daddy why she sounded worried, and he'd explained that she was just afraid that Noah would get into trouble at school if he knew too much.

Of course, Noah was already getting into trouble at school for knowing too much. Daddy understood about that-he told Noah it had been the same for him-but Mommy seemed to be upset by it. Daddy said that was because she loved him so much that she didn't want anything to hurt him or make him unhappy. Noah wasn't unhappy, but he didn't want Mommy to be unhappy, either, so he'd decided it was best just to keep what he knew to himself.

Besides, he could get away with more if she didn't know. Like this. If Mommy had known he knew how to re-program the remote key for her old Chevrolet Spark, she wouldn't have given it to him to play with when she got rid of the car. She certainly wouldn't have let him try it out in one of the agents' Suburbans when they were here last summer. And she would have warned the agents not to let him explore the super-secure armored SUV when he asked to.

It was Hobbes he'd asked; she'd said sure. Of course, she'd been right beside him the whole time. She'd even shown him some of the special features the Service had built into it. She was nice, even if she was one of those grown-ups who didn't think Noah could understand anything more than most eight-year-olds. She'd had no idea what he was up to when he kept clicking the locks and turning the ignition key back and forth. She thought he was just fooling around, like any other third-grade boy.

Re-programming the remote by clicking the locks and turning the key like that had been just as easy as they'd said it would be when he'd looked it up online. It was so easy it would hardly have been worth doing, if it hadn't answered the question Noah had been wondering about, whether the remote would work as well on one Chevrolet as another. And if he hadn't suspected that having his own key to the doors of the car Calvin and Hobbes drove him around in might come in useful sometime.

The funny part was that he'd ended up using the key, not to get away from them, the way he'd thought he would, but to get in their car _with _them without their knowing he was there. It had taken careful planning, but everything had worked out just the way he'd expected.

Their car had been parked with some of the other Suburbans in front of the Secret Service buildings in the little dip behind the crest of the hill. The buildings had been put there so they wouldn't spoil the view from the cottage-which meant that they were out of view of the agents who guarded the cottage as well.

Of course, there wasn't any need for the agents to be able to see them. The buildings were in the middle of a large property with a heavily-guarded outer fenceline. And there were always agents in the buildings, if only the off-duty ones having a sleep.

Noah had noticed that the way security was handled at the lighthouse was similar to the way it was handled at Camp David. Because the property was so secure, Noah and Sally were allowed to go outside without their detail being right beside them all the time. The agents were still there, but they stayed farther away and kept a lower profile than they did when they were taking Noah and Sally to school. Josh and Donna wanted their children to have as normal a childhood as possible, and that meant time to play outside without grownups on their heels every minute.

At the lighthouse, most of the agents' attention was focused on making sure no one broke into the compound. It would never have occurred to them that one of the children might want to break _out. _

Noah couldn't have done it without Sally and Gressie, of course. Sally's devotion to him was often irritating, but it had its uses; today it had been very useful. He'd told her just what to do, and he was sure she would carry out his instructions to the letter. She always did. Just to make extra-sure, though, he'd promised her that, if she did exactly what he said, he'd take her wish-list to Santa for her. He'd even bring her back some gingerbread from the village bakery.

She'd wanted to come too, of course. But he'd explained why that was impossible, and she'd understood. She still believed in Santa: if she couldn't get to him today herself, then helping Noah get there was the next best and most important thing. She really loved those gingerbread cookies, too.

So Sally had created the distraction he'd needed, jumping wildly around with Gressie after their last ride down the back of the hill, kicking up enough snow that no agent watching from the crest would have noticed Noah sliding under the SUV. Then Sally had pulled her sled up the hill, calling to Gressie to follow her and to Noah to please wait for her, please, please, please!

(Gressie could, in fact, be counted on to follow Sally anywhere, just as Sally could be counted on to follow Noah.)

Noah had left his sled under the crest at the top of the hill. On it was the bundle he'd made back in his room and smuggled outside and up the hill that morning, hidden on his sled under a couple of blankets. He and Sally had used one of the blankets to play with for a while, making a sort of tent out of it and crawling in and out with Gressie. Noah thought that would allay any suspicions the agents might have had about the other blanket he'd left draped over his sled while he rode down the back slope with Sally on hers the final time. The tent-blanket he brought with him. It was black, and he had a use for it.

The bundle consisted of three sweaters stuffed one inside the other, with his favorite hat pinned on top and a scarf wrapped around where the face should be. At the last minute, lying in the snow while Sally played noisily and distractingly with Gressie, Noah had slipped his winter jacket off and stuffed the dummy into it. He'd been playing so hard that he would have wanted to take it off anyway, even if he hadn't been wearing three more sweaters underneath.

The top one was red, like the jacket. It was good to have finally found a use for all those sweaters his grandmothers kept making for him. They both liked to knit, and they didn't seem to understand that boys who wore wool sweaters to school instead of fleeces or hoodies wouldn't find anyone wanting to play with them at recess.

Noah watched from under the SUV while Sally retrieved his sled from under the blanket, plopped herself down on top of the dummy, and pushed herself off to make the final run down the hill to the house. He could hear Gressie barking, and Sally shrieking, "Faster, Noah! Faster!" all the way down. She was doing better with this than he'd expected. But of course, he'd taught her a lot over the years. And she was motivated: she really did believe in Santa still.

The reprogrammed Chevy key did its trick. The door didn't shut quite as softly as Noah was hoping, but it didn't seem to attract any attention. Neither did the "click" as he relocked the car.

He curled himself up on the floor between the second and third row of seats, pulled the black blanket over him, and waited. Just once a feeling of panic shot through him, but he reached under the outer layers of sweaters to the kangaroo-pocket of the fleece he was wearing underneath, felt inside it, and relaxed.

A few minutes later the agents Noah called Calvin and Hobbes emerged from the Secret Service building and got into the car. Noah could hear them talking to each other as it started up, and then the rumble of the engine and the crunch of the tires as they drove away. There was a pause as they waited for the gate to be opened, and Calvin talked with the agent there for a moment. Then they pulled out onto the road, and picked up speed.

Noah settled back and began counting. Just ten more minutes and he'd be there. Everything was going beautifully.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6:

_A little earlier still (Christmas Eve, 12:50 p.m.):_

Sally was having a wonderful time. Noah had played with her all morning,and after lunch too. He'd even had a plan, with things for her to do. She loved it when he gave her a part in one of his schemes.

She wasn't worried about what the grown-ups were going to say because she didn't expect them to find out. One of the things she liked about Noah's plans was that they _worked. _He never made her act out parts that ended up getting her into trouble, the way her friend Caitlin's brother Alan did. This was the biggest, most complicated plot Noah had come up with yet, but because it was Noah's, she had complete faith that everything was going to work out perfectly.

As long as she remembered to do _exactly _what he had told her.

The Flexible Flyer whizzed down the hill. "Faster, Noah! Faster, faster!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. She knew just what to do. She'd been over it all with Noah again and again that morning. He'd made her practice steering the sled, lying on top of him instead of the bundle of sweaters with his jacket around it that was standing in for him now.

She'd enjoyed every moment of it. He usually made her use her own sled, which was smaller and not as fast as his. When they did share, he always had to be on top, because Daddy had said it was safer that way. It had been fun to lie on top of him for once, and get to steer. And it was fun to be steering his big sled all by herself now. All she had to do was follow the track they'd laid down earlier that morning. It led straight to the snowbank in front of the shed.

The shed was the original lean-to that the lighthouse keepers had used to store firewood in, along with kerosene, snowshoes, ropes, buckets, ladders, and gardening tools. It had been designed for practicality rather than looks, and had a door just a few yards away from the front door, facing the same direction, up the hill. The two doors were close enough together that the Secret Service had decided one agent could watch both at the same time.

Paths to the doors had been shoveled out yesterday, and again this morning, leaving large mounds of snow on either side. The path leading from the shed curved around towards the side of the house, where the driveway ended in a wide, graveled area where Josh and Donna had parked their car, when they still drove one, and where the agents had a couple of Suburbans parked now.

Sally steered the sled into the snowbank on the side of the shed farthest from the front door and rolled off, squealing and calling out to the absent Noah. That got Gressie, who had been racing beside her down the hill, jumping around excitedly again. Then Sally pushed the sled over the top of the snowbank and onto the path, opened the shed door, and shoved the Flexible Flyer inside. She chattered away to her imaginary brother and Gressie kept up a volley of barking all the time.

The agent on front-door duty saw a sled with two children on it speed down the hill and disappear behind one of the snow mounds by the paths. He saw the tip of a hat reappear, and heard Sally talking to her brother while the dog barked as they went into the shed. He smiled, and radioed in to central command that Frolic and Flashlight were inside and secure.

The agents assigned to Sally and Noah had taken up positions at the crest of the hill some distance from the sledding runs, so as not to be intrusive. They saw the two children careening down the hill and coming to a stop in a flurry of snow at the foot of it. They saw the dog jumping around, sending more snow flying into the air, and sled and children disappear over the top of the mound. They saw a hat reappear and the shed door open. They heard, more faintly, the same things the front-door agent heard: the dog barking, Sally's voice chatting to her brother. Then the shed door closed. Like their colleague, they both radioed in that Frolic and Flashlight were secure.

000000

Once inside the shed, Sally took off her snow gear. She managed to get her coat up on its hook, but left everything else strewn on the floor beneath it. Then she set about dismembering Noah's dummy. His hook was too high for her to reach, so she dumped his coat, scarf, hat and mittens on the floor beside her things. There was nothing unusual about the mess-not that Sally thought about that.

Her attention was entirely focused on getting into the kitchen unseen, as Noah wanted.

"Shhh, Gressie, _shhh!" _she hushed the dog, who dropped to the floor and looked up at her expectantly, panting. Sally tiptoed to the door and, screwing her face up with great concentration, slowly opened it a crack. She tried to peek through, but couldn't tell whether anyone was in the room or not, so she opened it a tiny bit more, and then a bit more after that. "_Shhh!" _she whispered again to Gressie, who was panting too loudly for her idea of secrecy.

If Donna or either of Sally's grandmothers had been in the kitchen, they would have heard her at once and wondered what on earth was going on. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) no one was in the kitchen. Sally discovered this when she finally got the door open widely enough that she could look around. Grinning with delight, she whisked herself and Gressie inside, and-secrecy abandoned now-shouted to Noah to follow her.

Running through the kitchen to the main entranceway and up the stairs to her room, she made as much noise as possible, stomping and laughing and calling out to Noah that he couldn't catch her, she was going to beat him, she would win. Gressie bounded along beside her, barking all the way. Her arms were full of Noah's sweaters from the dummy. Once safely inside her own room, she stuffed them into her bottom drawer. Then she curled up with Gressie on the bed to wait.

She thought about how pleased Noah was going to be with her, the list of wishes he was taking to Santa for her, and the gingerbread he'd promised to bring back. She could hear the wind whistling around the lighthouse tower, and the waves beating against the rocks below. It was a familiar sound, one she'd listened to every summer and winter night she'd spent here, all her life. She was tired out from all the excitement and hard play. It wasn't long before she fell asleep.

To be cont'd. . . .


	7. Chapter 7

Note: I really did intend this to be a fluffy little Christmas fic, and I thought I had the story all worked out. But then a new plot idea bubbled up, and I couldn't leave it alone. My apologies to anyone who started this just wanting some happy Christmas fluff. You _will _get that if you keep going, but I couldn't blame you if you're cross with me for taking this into darker territory than I billed it as.

And my apologies for the use of the n-word in the last section here. I hope it won't seem gratuitous by the time this is done.

Chapter 7:

Noah had stopped counting. He'd gotten up to twelve-hundred one-hundred, which was twice the amount he'd expected the trip to the village to take. Had he been counting too fast? Maybe. But not that much too fast, surely. More than ever he wished he'd brought a watch, one that wouldn't have given him away. Or a clock. Why hadn't he brought the little digital one from his room? He just hadn't thought of it.

It was beginning to dawn on him that there were a few things he hadn't thought of, including the possibility that Calvin and Hobbes didn't always go to the village when they left the lighthouse. He'd seen them there so many times last summer . . . but maybe the summer was different. What if they were going someplace really far away now, like Portland? Or Canada. Or all the way back to Washington, D.C. . . .

If only Calvin and Hobbes would _say _something that would tell him what was going on. But they were driving along in silence, broken only by the occasional burst of static from their radio, and a few words in what Noah recognized as their dispatcher's voice. Sometimes one of them would say something in reply, but Noah couldn't make much out over the hum of the car's tires, and what he could hear was just the usual indecipherable Secret Service jargon: "One-oh-two and one-fifty-six on One to the French. Roger?" "Roger. One-oh-two and one-fifty-six steady on One to the French."

What did that mean? The numbers were their ID codes, he knew. But he had no idea what the rest of it was about.

His hiding-place on the floor between the second and third seating row was cramped and uncomfortable. He wished he could move around and stretch his legs. And he wished it wasn't so warm. He'd pulled the blanket away from his face so he could breathe, but Calvin and Hobbes had the heater going full blast, and the space felt hot and airless. That plus the vibration was beginning to make him feel sick.

He tucked his hand into his fleece pocket again. The little package was still there, lumpy but secure. Surely he'd get there somehow. It was Christmas. Everything was always good at Christmas, wasn't it?

He closed his eyes and pictured the scene in the village: the lighted shop windows; the bakery full of gingerbread; the snow falling in the park; Santa on his chair in the bandstand, the heaters the local Lions Club had set up to keep him from freezing blasting out hot air; the long line of families waiting to see him. . . .

In spite of his best intentions, Noah drifted off to sleep.

000000

François Gagnon came bustling out of the kitchen, his face as red as a Christmas bauble and his great white hat making him look just a little like a Santa Claus turned upside down. He waved a spoon at his youngest daughter, a pretty girl in her late teens. She was standing at the top of a ladder, her hands full of juniper and balsam.

"Too short!" he called to her. "You're making the loops too short!"

"They're fine, Papa," her sister, Claire-an equally pretty young woman in her mid-twenties-tried to assure him. He wasn't assured.

"Use more," he insisted. "I ordered two hundred yards, just for this room. It must be perfect, _perfect, _for this evening!"

Claire caught her sister's eye, and twinkled at her.

"All right, Papa," the younger girl sighed. "I'll start over."

"It must be _perfect!" _he insisted.

"Don't forget the mistletoe!" their mother's voice called from the kitchen, where she was up to her elbows in pastry flour.

"Don't worry, Mama," Claire called back to her. "There's enough here to cover the whole ceiling, Papa's ordered so much."

000000

A long, red Jaguar buzzed down the highway, twenty miles over the speed limit. It easily passed the big, black Suburban that was humming along at a mere 65.

"Have you got them yet?" the blonde in the passenger seat asked.

The driver-a short, fat man in a silk suit, who was driving with one hand while punching a number into his cell phone with the other-pushed his cigar into the corner of his mouth and said, "Nope."

"It's after two. I'm famished. They'd better be open."

"If they aren't, they'll open for me."

The blonde rolled her eyes.

"Honestly, Max," she said. "We're spending Christmas in this dump of a town in Maine, and you still think the world revolves around you?"

He put the phone down, and took the cigar out of his mouth.

"This is _the _place to be this year, Sabrina. Haven't you wrapped your mind around that yet?" _Your pretty little mind, _he almost said, but he wasn't interested in stirring her up. He wanted a peaceful lunch.

"Just because Josh Lyman has a vacation place here."

"Just because President Lyman is planning to spend the holiday here."

"And when did you become such a fan of Josh Lyman?"

He snorted. "Come, my dear, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Everybody who's anybody is pushing to get into this town now. You usually appreciate that kind of thing. And we had the place already."

"Instead of the one I wanted in the Hamptons."

"This was a tenth the price when I bought it, and it was a hot spot already."

"Some hot spot. One Starbucks and a handful of dumpy little stores."

"You seem to have had a pretty good time in them this morning. The back seat's full of shopping bags."

"Awful stuff, but I had to do _something_, didn't I? It was that or stay in the house and listen to Justin howl. Mariana couldn't get him to shut up. That brat of hers was no use either, of course-she just sat there reading her book the whole time, and making me want to slap her. I had to get out."

"It wouldn't be any different in Southampton."

"There's a _Saks _in Southampton! And a decent jeweler."

"You don't have to worry about that. I've done my shopping already."

She smiled a little then.

"Oh, well. It will do for this year, I guess. But that restaurant had better be open. It's the only decent place around here to eat."

"I told you, if they aren't, they'll open for me."

000000

Reginald Morton wiped the coffee off his beard with the back of his hand, and pulled his battered old 4x4 off the highway just outside the village. He knew the place: it had taken him a while to find it, that first day, but he'd done this so many times since, he knew the place all right.

A week he'd been here; he'd come every day. Came this morning, too. Would have stayed right through, but he'd run out of his chaw, so he'd taken a chance on it and done a run to the gas station a mile or so back on the highway. It was gnawing at him that he shouldn't have done that, he might have missed something by leaving then. But he'd only been gone mebbe ten minutes, fifteen at the most. And it was colder'n a nigger's balls in all this snow: he'd needed that chaw, and some coffee, too.

He'd had his flask, but he didn't want to touch that if he didn't have to. He'd need a steady hand when he shot.

He drove up the hill as far as the track would let him, then pulled off to the side. Grabbed his gun-not his daddy's old Savage 99, the one he'd got his first whitetail with, but the new one, the Barrett-and headed up the trail to the lookout.

There wasn't much time left: just this afternoon, till nightfall, and that came so damn early up here. Christmas was tomorrow. Damn it, he shouldn'a left the hide; he shoulda brought a second thermos, and made sure his chaw was full up this morning.

It was snowing again, getting colder. He shuddered a little. How did these Mainers stand it? Hunting wasn't supposed to be this uncomfortable. He wasn't used to this kind of weather.

Still, he had plenty of chaw now, and a thermos full of fresh coffee. And his flask, of course, if he had to have something else. He could wait till dark if he had to.

He patted his belly. With his wild white hair and beard, he'd sometimes been told he looked a little like Santa himself-or would do, if he'd get himself the suit.

He was going to do better than that. There were other fat guys who could wear the suit, but he was the only one who could see what really had to be done.

It was Christmas tomorrow, and he was going to save it.

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To be cont'd. . . .


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Note:

It's hard not to assume that anyone who isn't letting me know that they liked a chapter, didn't. I get discouraged when I don't get feedback-and when I'm discouraged, I can't write. . . .

There's some strong language in this and the following chapters. Sadly, though, it's nothing an eight-year-old kid wouldn't hear on the playground every day.

Chapter 8:

L'Auberge Chez Gagnon was a low, white-shingled building nestled on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. It was reached by a sandy road that wound its way through stands of cedar, feathery white pine, and birch. Many visitors found this approach part of the restaurant's charm: one drove through the woods for a mile or so, then rounded a bend and was met by a sudden view of the picturesque old house and the breathtaking expanse of ocean behind it. Even long-time customers often pulled over to enjoy the sight and take pictures. A visit to L'Auberge was a special event, worth commemorating.

The red Jaguar sped down the narrow road. Max took the curves faster than most drivers would have thought wise, given how much snow and ice had built up over the sand. When the inn came into sight, neither he nor his companion (his wife, the fourth one; they'd been together more than ten years, which was a record for him) exclaimed over the view. Max stopped the car right in front of the entrance, ignoring the "Please Keep This Entrance Clear" sign, and climbed out. Sabrina followed. The hem of her billowing, cape-like coat (tip-dyed Russian sable; it had set Max back $200,000, just before the recession hit) caught in the car door. She jerked it open and tugged the coat free impatiently, then hurried after Max, leaving the door wide open behind her.

Inside the dining room Claire heard the first door slam, and looked up from the flowers she was arranging on a table for two beside the fireplace. She saw Max bustling up the restaurant's steps, and let out a moan.

"Oh, no," she said to her sister. "Here comes trouble."

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It was the slamming of another car door that woke Noah. He blinked. For a moment he had no idea where he was. Then he remembered. If he'd had his watch, he'd have known that he'd only been asleep about fifteen minutes, but he didn't have his watch, and had no idea how long he'd been out or how far from home he was now. All he knew was that the car had stopped, and someone had gotten out.

He lay as still as he could, and listened. With the engine quiet, surely he should be able to hear _something _if either Calvin or Hobbes was still there, but everything was silent. Suddenly the radio spluttered into life again: "One-oh-two and one-fifty-six, report, please." There was a moment of silence, then Hobbes' voice-not in the car, but sounding strange and staticky over the radio-saying "One-oh-two and one-fifty-six arrived destination." "One-fifty-six confirm," the dispatcher requested. Calvin's voice answered: "One-fifty-six confirms." They must have been speaking into their earpieces.

So he was alone in the car. The question was, how long was he going to have to wait there?

Noah was not a patient child. He'd been lying in a cramped position on the floor of the Suburban for almost an hour. Curiosity and the need to _move_ overrode quite easily the cautious voice in his head telling him that the logical thing to do was just to keep lying there until Calvin and Hobbes came back, and hope they'd stop off at the village for coffee or groceries on the return trip to the lighthouse. Noah eased himself onto his knees and peeked out the window.

He knew where he was at once: at the Gagnons' restaurant. It was his mother's and father's favorite; they'd taken him and Sally there many times. The owners always made a fuss over them, but he couldn't see any sign of them now-or of Calvin and Hobbes, either.

What he could see, less than three feet away through gently-drifting snow, was a long red car. A Jaguar XK, he noted immediately, and was delighted to see that it actually had the hood ornament he liked so much on older Jags. They weren't made like that anymore; someone must have retrofitted it. The car was parked between the Suburban and the restaurant, and its passenger-side door, which was facing him, was standing open, giving him an excellent view inside.

The back seats-there were two very small ones, bucket-style-were stuffed with shopping bags. Noah wondered if they had Christmas presents in them, and if so, who they were for, and what they were. Then he noticed a child seat, barely visible under the bags. If the kid was getting all that, he was a seriously lucky dude. Noah had never got that many presents at one time in his life, and he had two doting grandmothers and a grandfather, as well as his parents and sister.

For a moment Noah's thought wandered to the tree waiting back at the lighthouse, and the packages that would be under it tomorrow. He wondered if he was going to get the big new Lego set and the gaming console he'd asked for. Probably not the console-his parents didn't like his spending a lot of time with video games. He'd put it on his list, but he'd never really thought he was going to get anywhere with that one. And the Lego set was _huge, _and really expensive. They'd probably get him a smaller one. . . .

And then something else caught his eye. A book. A kid's book, but not for a kid who was still riding in a child seat; this was a thick book, thicker than anything most of the kids in Noah's class at school could have got through. The edges of the pages were worn, and its battered paper dust-jacket-he could see the front cover poking out from under a shopping bag-seemed to be held together with a million pieces of yellowed Scotch tape. It was a book that somebody must have tossed carelessly into the car without any concern for its future, because it was lying spread-eagled on the edge of the far seat, one cover pinned under the shopping bag, and the other pushed up at a dangerous-looking angle by one of the parcels on the floor. Several pages had crumpled at the corners, and a new, un-mended tear had been added to all the taped-up ones across the front jacket. Snowflakes were blowing through the open car door. Some of them landed on the book, leaving new splotches on the already heavily-stained cover.

Noah stared at the decrepit object, riveted. He knew that book. Not just the story in it, although he knew that too, almost by heart, but the particular, individual book itself. There couldn't possibly be more than one copy of Arthur Ransome's _Swallows and Amazons _with a cover like that. He recognized the pattern the pieces of tape made. He knew what name would be written inside. And he knew how much that book mattered to its owner. In a million years, Catalina Rivera would never, _ever _treat that book like that: it was her most valued possession.

Noah choked with fury. He thought he could _feel _his blood start to boil. Glancing over his shoulder he saw no sign of Calvin or Hobbes, so he opened the SUV's door and climbed out. Another moment and he was diving into the back of the Jag, digging under the shopping bags to try to free the book.

"God damn the fuckers," a man's voice said, somewhat muffled by the driver's-side window. Noah froze. The driver's door opened, and the front seat creaked and groaned as a heavy body dropped into it.

"How _dare _they?" That was a woman's voice, shrill with anger. She swept into the passenger seat and slammed the door. "The _whole room_ reserved? There was only one table set! And no one was there, no one at all, until that couple came in, and if _they're _the kind of customer Gagnon makes a fuss about now, that place is really going to the dogs. I can't believe they could afford to eat there, the way they were dressed. What did they _say _to you, to make you leave like that? I thought you were getting somewhere with Gagnon before _they _came in!"

"They were Secret Service," the man said, angrily. "The mother-fuckers. 'Securing the premises, for the President's visit this evening.' This _evening! _We could have eaten and been gone by this evening, if Gagnon wasn't such a half-assed idiot. He just kept babbling about having to close so he could get ready for the President and the First Lady coming tonight, and then those fuckers showed up and said we had to go. They were so god-damned mealy-mouthed about it-"Please, sir; I'm sorry, sir"-it made me want to vomit. But I could see their guns bulging under their jackets the whole time, and only an idiot tries to mess with those fuckers."

"_Awful!" _the woman said. "The whole thing was _awful! _I've _never _been treated like that in my life, _never!"_

"Gagnon's a fucker, too. I used to book the whole room every couple of weeks, when they first opened; I was their best fucking customer, before the economy went south and I had to sell off all those properties. That's the last time I'll take my money in _there_, I can tell you. The god-damned mother-fucker. . . ."

He was starting the car while he raged. He backed it out of the space and executed a three-point turn in a series of angry jerks. One of the bags fell off the back seat and emptied a load of silky lingerie over Noah. He almost squeaked in surprise, but managed to stop himself just in time.

Neither of the adults in the front of the car seemed to notice the petrified boy lying among the shopping bags and lace-trimmed ladies' underwear on the floor behind them. The car roared down the road away from the inn, its infuriated driver taking the icy curves more recklessly than ever.

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To be cont'd. . . .


	9. Chapter 9

Noah was more frightened than he'd ever been in his life. He was a stowaway in a car he wasn't supposed to be in, and it was being driven at what felt like a hundred miles an hour by a complete lunatic, who kept shouting and using words that Noah knew from the playground but had never heard from a grownup before. And he wasn't wearing a seat-belt. He was being flung back and forth as the car shot round the curves. It was a sign of how scared he was that he didn't even ask himself whether it was centripetal or centrifugal force that he was experiencing.

Something was tickling the back of his neck, and his wooly hat, which was a little too big, had slipped down over his eyes. It did that sometimes-that was why he liked the other one better, the one he'd pinned onto that fake Noah to trick the agents into thinking he was on Sally's sled with her. He wondered now why he'd thought that was such a clever thing to do. If he hadn't done it, he wouldn't be lying in the back of a stranger's car now, blinded by his own hat and too scared to push it out of the way.

The worst thing of all would be if these crazy people-the woman sounded every bit as nuts as the man-caught him back there. Noah was not quite as innocent as his mother imagined. He knew why the President's children had to be protected by men with guns. But his understanding of that had been, as it was with most things, a purely intellectual one. He knew that there were people who might want to kidnap him or Sally so they could force his father to do things only the President had the power to do. He had never translated that intellectual fact into an emotional reality; it had existed on the same plane for him as the knowledge that light travels around the earth seven times a second: it was interesting, and nothing more.

Now he was beginning to realize that, while he didn't know what, exactly, these people might do to him if they found him, it could be something very bad indeed. Bad for him. Bad for his parents. Bad for Sally. Maybe even bad for Gressie. And he was hit full-force with a kind of fear he'd never had any reason to experience before.

His mother might have underestimated his ability to glean facts from remarkably slim hints in adult conversations he was never meant to have overheard, but she was unequivocally right when she'd told Josh and Ron Butterfield that, no matter how smart Noah might be, he was still an eight-year-old, with the emotions of an eight-year-old, and that some things were too horrible for an eight-year-old to have to deal with.

Lying there in the back of the speeding Jaguar, with a woman's lace-trimmed underpants tickling his neck and the rolled-up brim of his wooly hat rubbing into his eyes, Noah suddenly wanted to cry.

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Betty McCarthy walked slowly up Main Street from the Salty Dog restaurant, heavy grocery bags weighing down each arm. She was on her mid-afternoon break, and was taking some things up to the church hall for the supper after the carol sing that night.

Halfway up the hill she stopped for a moment to catch her breath. Then she pushed on. She was feeling it more than she used to, in her back and her feet. Hitting fifty a few years ago hadn't been any joke, and waitressing was hard work. It never occurred to her to complain, though. She didn't know anybody who didn't have to work just as hard, or harder.

At the top of the hill Main Street widened into a kind of square. The corners were anchored by churches-Catholic, Baptist, Congregational-and along the short streets on either side were some of the tourists' favorite businesses: the ice-cream shop, which was closed for the season, and the bakery, which was doing a roaring business selling gingerbread and hot chocolate to the families that were lining up for a last chance to see Santa and get their orders in.

On one side of the square was the park, a couple of acres of green space centered around an old-fashioned bandstand. On Sunday afternoons in summer all kinds of bands played here, some of them coming down from as far away as Saint John in New Brunswick, or Moncton, even. In December it became the undisputed seat of Santa Claus. The Lions' Club had draped the bandstand with tarpaulins to cut down on the windchill for the old man, and had set up a couple of heaters to take the edge off the cold. Bright orange electric cables snaked away through the snow to a generator, carefully situated far enough away that its noise wouldn't make it too hard for Santa to hear the children's whispered requests. In the distance one could see the little village climbing up the hill, and the thick line of woods behind that.

Betty paused again outside the bakery, setting her bags down on a bench. A young woman and a child were just getting out of a small car parked by the curb beside her. She recognized them, and smiled.

"Hello, Mariana," she said. "Merry Christmas."

The woman was unstrapping a toddler from his child seat in back. She looked up, and smiled shyly in return.

"Merry Christmas, Betty." She had a soft voice with a soft, pretty lilt to it: Spanish, Betty knew, though she wasn't sure where Mariana was from.

"Felice Maridad," Betty offered, quite bravely for her.

"Feliz Navidad," Mariana returned the greeting, without any hint of correction or laughter in her voice. Betty was the closest thing she had to a friend in the town, and she appreciated the older woman's effort, even though it was quite unnecessary: Mariana had been saying "Merry Christmas" ever since she was ten.

Betty turned to the child, a girl who could have been anywhere from second grade to fourth.

"How are you, Cathy?" she asked. "Looking forward to tomorrow?"

The girl's dark eyes looked back at her seriously.

"Not really," she said. "But I'm looking forward to this afternoon."

Betty tipped her head a little, as if seeing the girl from a different angle could help her understand this strange reply.

"She's hoping to see a friend," Mariana explained. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked, Betty thought, even tireder than Betty felt.

"Can I go to the park now?" the girl asked. "Of course," said her mother. "Wait for me there." The child dashed across the street.

"Is everything all right?" Betty asked. Mariana sighed. "Is it the baby? Or that man again?"

They had met at the playground in the summer, when Betty was looking after her granddaughter and Mariana had brought the toddler there. Betty knew that Mariana had been working as a maid for one of the wealthy families who vacationed in Crabapple Cove, and that they had co-opted her into being their nanny as well when the baby came. Somehow she was expected to manage both jobs, as if one wasn't enough.

"The baby's teething again," Mariana said. She had got him out of his seat now, and was holding him against her body. Drool was running down his chin, which was red and chapped-looking, and he was fussing. "The molars."

"Oh, that's always hard on them. But-the man?"

The man had been coming on to Mariana for some time now. She was a beautiful young woman.

Mariana shrugged, but the disgusted look that crossed her face told Betty everything.

"The same," she said. "I push him away. So far, he doesn't push back."

"Something is bothering you, though. Is it-" Betty hesitated. Money wasn't something she and this young woman had ever talked about. "Christmas is a hard time. My church is doing a tree for the children. If you haven't been able to get her anything, bring her there. Some of the things will be nice. There are books, too. Cathy likes to read a lot, doesn't she?" She had rarely seen the girl without a book.

Mariana's smile seemed to start somewhere deep inside her. It made her whole face glow.

"Betty," she said, "you are so kind. I have something for her, but not much. No books. And she lost one today, her favorite. Mrs. Maxwell took it from her. I hope she will give it back, but. . . ."

"Bring her to the tree, Mariana."

"If I can get away."

To be cont'd. . . .


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10:

Noah knew when they'd come to the highway because the curves straightened out and he didn't have to tense himself against slipping from side to side-or, in his position, head to toe-anymore. That was the upside. The downside was that the car could go faster now, and it did. Noah had always thought he liked fast rides. He wasn't enjoying this one at all.

Lying on the floor among the shopping bags, his too-loose hat covering his eyes, he never saw the moose step into the road.

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Catalina Rivera-or Cat, as she called herself-danced from foot to foot to keep warm as she waited in the park. Her coat was too short and too thin for standing still, and her boots were just rubber ones with no linings.

Her mother crossed the road and joined her.

"Do you want to see Santa?" she asked.

Cat shook her head. She hadn't believed in Santa for years. She knew he was just an ordinary man from the village in a beard and red suit.

"I can't keep Tyler out in this cold for long."

"That's okay. You can take him home. I'll wait here."

Mariana looked at her daughter doubtfully.

"You'll be all right by yourself?"

"Of course, Mommy. And I won't be by myself after he comes."

"What if he doesn't come?"

"He'll come." Cat had no doubt about that. "He promised he would. He always does what he promises."

Mariana didn't know whether to smile or sigh. Her daughter was lucky to be so young that she still knew boys who always did what they promised. Or to think she did.

"You'll call me if he doesn't, though? You have that quarter I gave you?"

Mariana had a cell phone the Maxwells had given her, since it was convenient for them to be able to reach her sometimes when she was out with the baby, but she couldn't afford one for her daughter.

Cat nodded. "I have it. But I won't need it."

"All right then, chiquita. I'd better take Ty back. It's too cold for him out here, and he needs his nap."

Cat nodded, and went back to bouncing from one foot to the other. Her present for Noah was in her pocket, along with the postcard he'd sent her in August, saying where and when to meet him.

It would the first time they'd been able to see each other properly in a year. Most eight-year-olds would have forgotten or given up by then, but Noah wasn't most eight-year-olds, and neither was Cat. They were true pirates who had been sailing the high seas together every summer and the occasional Christmas since they were four. Last summer had been a series of dreadful disappointments, but they'd learned from their mistakes and come up with a better plan. Neither one of them was about to let a little thing like Noah's father becoming the President of the United States or Noah being followed everywhere by the Secret Service stop them from seeing each other now.

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Sabrina saw the moose and screamed. Max saw it, swore, and slammed on the brakes. The car fishtailed on the icy road and skidded into a snowbank, missing the moose by inches. The hood buried itself in the snow, crumpling when it reached the frozen inner core. The airbags inflated.

Max hit his belt and the steering-wheel bag hard, and said, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck it!_" Sabrina kept on screaming.

Noah had been thrown over the front seat and bounced off the airbag into Sabrina's lap.

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Up in the woods, Reginald Morton shifted a little, spat, and wondered if it was time to let himself have a little whiskey. It was cold as hell up here on this rocky outcrop, with the wind in his face and the layers of ice underneath. He'd brought a tarp and blankets, of course, and made the hide as snug as he could, but the cold seeped through anyhow. Why the good Lord woulda made a place like this, he couldn't imagine. Georgia now, there was country worth living in.

One slug wouldn't hurt. He took his flask off his hip and knocked it back, felt the heat burn a path down his throat to his chest, and out along his limbs to his fingers and toes. Ah, that was better.

He wiped his gloved hand across his mouth, steadied the binoculars, and took another look.

This bit of rock had quite the view: down over the treetops to the roofs of the village, its church towers and spires clustered together, the bandstand in the park. Beyond that, the grey winter harbor, a few snowy islands dotted with dark pines, and then, beyond the islands and the sandbar, the wide expanse of the ocean, which today looked like old pewter hammered into silver-tipped ridges and shot through near the horizon with lines of dull gold.

Last summer an artist had found this spot, and come every day for a week to paint that water in all its breathtaking changes of color and light.

Reggie never glanced at it. His whole attention was focused on the scene nearer at hand.

To be cont'd. . . .


	11. Chapter 11

Author's Note: Hey, guys-I'm sorry it's taking so long to get back to Josh and Donna. I've gotten myself into a bind with the timing: I can't take you back to Josh talking to Sally until I finish up the stuff that has to happen before that. I'll try to get through it as quickly as possible. At least Donna shows up in the backstory here. . . .

Chapter 11:

For a moment, Noah had no idea what had happened. One minute he'd been stretched out on the floor of the back seat under a lot of shopping bags; the next he was draped across a strange woman's lap, staring up into her face. Sabrina stared back at him, shocked into silence. Max hadn't even looked over at her yet; his whole attention was focused on his crumpled car. "Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, _fuck," _he was muttering over and over, though not as loudly as before.

Sabrina made a gurgling noise that turned into, "What . . .? Who . . .? How . . .?" She didn't seem able to finish any of the thoughts.

Noah's mind finally clicked into focus. He saw the door handle beside him, reached for it, tugged it open, and tumbled out into the snow. The woman grabbed at him as he went, but all she could get a grip on was his hat.

Noah scrambled to his feet, hatless, and started to run. He saw trees ahead of him, woods, and headed for them, guessing he'd have a better chance of getting away from these people there than out in the open on the road.

He was still clutching the battered copy of Cat's book.

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Cat was beginning to feel a little forlorn. She was cold. Stamping her feet and jumping around wasn't helping much anymore. Pirates _don't_ feel forlorn, she told herself. But that reminded her that Mrs. Maxwell had taken _Swallows and Amazons _away from her that morning. When teachers did things like that, you could usually count on getting your book, toy, whatever it was that had annoyed them, back at the end of the day. Knowing Mrs. Maxwell, Cat wasn't sure that she was ever going to see her book again. Sabrina was as likely to toss it in the first trash bin she came to as she was to give it back.

Cat still didn't know what she'd done wrong. She'd just been sitting there in the car-the little Kia the Maxwells had got her mother to do errands in-and reading, while her mother fussed over the Maxwell's baby, getting him out of his seat to take into the house, while Mrs. Maxwell was telling Mariana what she wanted her to do that afternoon, and trying to be heard over his yells.

Usually the Maxwells _liked _Cat to keep quiet and out of the way. When she wasn't at school, she spent as much time as she could out of the house, and when she had to be inside she stayed in the little room she shared with her mother, stretched out on the bed, reading. Whenever she did have to be in the same room as Mrs. Maxwell, she kept her head down and the woman ignored her.

But this time Mrs. Maxwell hadn't ignored her. Tyler had been howling, and all of a sudden Mrs. Maxwell had started yelling, too. She'd screamed that Cat was a useless little brat who never did anything to help. And then she'd snatched the book out of Cat's hand, and for a moment Cat had thought she was going to get slapped across the face. Mrs. Maxwell had stopped herself just in time. Then she'd gasped that she couldn't take all this anymore, and she'd jumped into the Jag and zoomed off down the driveway and away.

She'd come back a couple of hours later, Cat knew, but only to pick up Mr. Maxwell so they could go out to lunch. She hadn't given the book back. Cat really wasn't sure she would.

She wouldn't have minded so much if it had been something else-Cat's sandwich at lunch, or an ice-cream, or something. But Cat didn't own very many books. She loved every one the way another child might have loved a doll or a stuffed toy. They were her friends, her companions in distress, her magic keys to other worlds that were much more interesting and satisfying and _fun _than anything in the real world she'd ever known. Anything except the time she'd shared with Noah, and she wouldn't have had that without the book.

Cat had been a very early reader. With nothing else to do at home she'd mastered the art of getting through a long story, figuring out strange words and situations in the library books her mother borrowed, by the time most children were just beginning to learn their abc's. Her mother had found this book in a discard pile outside a used-book store in the city, and had brought it home to her.

From the moment she'd opened it, Cat had fallen in love. The book showed her children doing things she'd never imagined that life could include: sailing and camping and having adventures together in a big group of other children, some of them brothers and sisters, some just friends. They seemed very real to Cat. They weren't perfect, but they were nice in a way her small heart longed for: fair to each other, taking care of each other, and having so much more fun together than Cat had ever had with anyone in all her short life.

Living the way she did, Cat hadn't had a chance to make any friends. The other kids she met either teased her or ignored her. It didn't help that she was so much smarter than they were, though she herself wouldn't have identified the problem that way-not when she was four, anyway. She just knew that she didn't seem to have anything in common with other children she met, that she didn't like them much, and they certainly didn't like her.

It got worse when she started school. She might not have survived that, if she hadn't made one real friend by then.

She'd met Noah on the beach, the summer they were both four. The Maxwells always brought Mariana to Maine to look after things for them, and Cat of course came too. Tyler hadn't been born then, so her mother wasn't so busy, and during the summer she would get her work done in the morning and then they'd go to the beach together. Mariana would sit on a blanket and watch her daughter build sandcastles and play at the edge of the water.

Noah's mother did the same thing. _She _had a baby, a little curly-haired girl who was only one, so she was always playing with her, and keeping an eye from a distance while Noah amused himself farther off.

Both mothers were happy when their children found another child to play with on the beach. Mariana noticed when Cat started playing with the same boy every day, but she was far too shy to approach the boy's mother and try to start a conversation. Sometimes they saw each other and smiled or waved, and once in a while they exchanged a few words, but it never went beyond that.

Donna noticed Cat and Mariana, too, but she never sought Mariana out or got to know her. The extraordinary business of becoming famous for what Cliff Calley had threatened to do to her and what Josh had done to save her from it, of having a video of the worst hours of her life go viral and be seen by millions of people around the world and then having a movie made about them that was seen by millions more, had made Donna a little shy about talking to strangers. She was approached by so many of them that whenever she could avoid interactions with people she didn't know, she did.

She'd agreed to the movie, of course-had actually been more excited by the idea than Josh had been-but she hadn't realized then just how strange it would feel to have everyone she met recognize her and think they knew everything about her. And then when Josh became a U.S. Senator, there was another whole layer of fame added on for her to deal with-especially when she was in Maine.

She had plenty of good friends from her earlier life, and plenty of contact with other mothers at Noah's schools and programs. She made the effort to make playdates and get to know other families during the school year for his sake, but in the summer she let herself take a break from all that. She took the children to the public beach because she knew Noah needed company his own age, but she was happy just to sit in the sun and play with Sally, feeling the wind on her face and listening to the crash of the surf against the shore, knowing that her son was happily occupied close enough by that she could be sure he was safe, and yet far enough away that he could have some of the freedom he was beginning to need.

The first day they met, Cat hadn't thought Noah was going to be a friend. He'd come up to the castle she'd been building in the wet sand just beyond the waves, and she'd thought he was going to kick it over, like the other boys would.

"Don't you dare touch this," she'd growled at him. "It's a pirate's castle, and the pirates will _get _you if you do."

"I wasn't going to," he'd protested. And then he'd said, "What kind of pirates?"

"Amazon pirates," she'd said, because she'd already read _Swallows and Amazons _by then.

"Why Amazon?" he'd asked, because he hadn't. But he made his mother stop at the bookstore in the village on the way home that day, and they'd actually had the book in stock. (He never knew what a lucky stroke that was. The owner had a great fondness for English children's books in general, and Arthur Ransome's in particular.)

Noah was well into the book when they went to the beach the next afternoon. By the end of the week, he'd finished it.

He and Cat played together every chance they got after that. The glaciated rocks that jutted out into the water became their boats, their tents, their pirate havens. And when they said good-bye at the end of the summer, they knew that they were going to be counting the days before they could get together again.

Even at four, they had both had enough experience to know that a good friend was hard to find-especially when you were as unlike anyone else you met as Noah was, or Cat.

Now, four years later, Cat was waiting to see Noah at the bandstand in the park. He'd said his family always came there to see Santa on Christmas Eve. He'd promised honest pirate, so she knew he wouldn't let anything keep him away. She just wished he'd hurry up; she was getting so cold.

She went back to bouncing from one foot to the other, her hands dug deep in her pockets, the right one closed around the little package she had there for him.

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"What the fuck was _that?" _Max said.

"I don't know."

"It was a kid."

"No kidding." Sabrina wasn't trying to be funny, and Max didn't smile.

"How the hell did he get into the car?"

"I. DON'T. KNOW." Sabrina thought she was starting to hyper-ventilate. This was one of the most terrible days she'd ever had, almost as bad as going into labor with Tyler three days before her scheduled C-section had been.

Noah had landed on her with considerable force; she was feeling bruised and battered, as well as extremely hungry. She should have been eating François Gagnon's oysters and caviar by now. And she'd already had a terrible morning: Tyler crying and _crying _and not shutting up, and that girl just _sitting _there, not doing anything to help, her nose buried in her stupid book the way it always was. She was such a strange kid; she gave Sabrina the creeps. But Mariana was too good a bargain to let go. They could actually pay her less because of the girl-there weren't many employers who'd be willing to have the brat around all the time like that. Sometimes Sabrina thought she couldn't stand having her around any longer, though, and today had been one of those days.

"He must have been going to steal something. The car-there must be a gang of thieves, they put him into the car so he could open it up for them later. Maybe Gagnon's part of it. We should call the police. That his hat? They can identify him with that. What the hell is the matter with this phone? Oh, fuck it, we're in a dead spot. Fuck, fuck, _fuck." _

"I don't care about the police. I need something to _eat." _

"We'll have to get out and walk, then. We can't be too far from the village. I'll call the cops when we get there. And the tow truck, too. Maybe I can say it's the kid's fault we crashed the car. If he's one of Gagnon's, I can get the insurance to go after him for it. Or we could sue."

"If I don't get something to eat soon, I'm going to be sick."

"Well, we'll have to hike for it."

Max was wearing Italian leather shoes. Sabrina had on stiletto-heeled Mario Blahnik boots. They got out of the car and trudged miserably down the side of the highway, Sabrina wobbling on her feet and crying in frustration, and Max cursing all the way.

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	12. Chapter 12

Noah slogged his way up the hill through the snowy woods. An opening in the trees had led him into a sort of track or road. Prints of tires in the snow showed it had been used recently, since yesterday's blizzard. It was easier walking in the prints than in the deeper snow between the trees, and he hoped a road like this would lead to the village. He really didn't want to go back to the highway, where those people might catch up with him.

But the road kept going upwards. He reached a place where it veered away to the right, the opposite direction from where he thought the village must be. The tire-marks headed off to the left there. That was interesting; maybe there was another way down to the village, though it looked too narrow to be a proper road.

He followed the tire-tracks and discovered a truck pulled off to the side in a place where a thick growth of trees and bushes hid it from view. He was almost on top of it before he saw it.

It was a battered old pickup with a lot of stickers on the windows and the bumpers. Some were NRA, which wasn't unusual around there, but always made Noah uncomfortable because his parents didn't like it. They said the NRA was responsible for more preventable deaths than any other organization in the country, barring the military, and that their influence on lawmakers at all levels of government was one of the biggest scandals in the country, too.

A big, new-looking sticker said, "Stop the War on Christmas!" He'd never seen that one before. What did it mean? Did someone want a war stopped just on Christmas Day but not on any other? Noah tried to think what war it could be talking about. It didn't make sense.

Then he noticed a sticker in the side window, and felt his face go hot with anger: "Lick Lyin' Lyman." That had been a campaign slogan in the last election. He absolutely hated it. His father was _not _a liar! He never told lies. A lot of commentators on what his parents called Fox Noise had said he was, though; had said there was a big left-wing media conspiracy, and even a video that had been made years ago right here in the village had been photo-shopped to make Noah's dad look like a hero when he wasn't. Noah was quite certain that his dad _was _a hero. They were the liars. He hated them.

He shouldn't have wasted time looking at the stickers. He needed to get away from there and get to the village and Cat. There were boot-prints going up the hillside away from the truck. He took a few steps after them, thinking the track might go over a rise and then turn down to the village, but he didn't get far before he stopped.

Something about the idea of following those tracks was making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Suddenly he felt cold, and very much aware of all the sounds around him that he hadn't noticed before: creaking sounds, and cracking ones, and then a sharp, snapping noise. They might have been caused by little animals moving about, or the wind-there was a very slight one-moving frozen branches and breaking off twigs. Noah didn't like them, though. It occurred to him that he was alone in the woods with no one else nearby except someone who loved guns and didn't like his father.

Moving as quietly as he could-which wasn't very-he walked back towards the main track. As he passed the hidden truck, he saw another trail he hadn't noticed before, one that ran roughly in the same direction as the one he was on-east-but downhill instead of up. There were bootprints on that, too, but they were going the other way; someone had walked up there, and hadn't gone down again.

The snow was deep, over the tops of Noah's boots. It was going to be a struggle to get down there, but following that trail felt like the right thing to do. Stepping in the prints whenever he could, Noah plunged on down the hill.

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About ten minutes before the Jag came to grief, Max had turned off the main highway onto a secondary one that was the shortest route into town. One of the things he cursed about as he and Sabrina trudged along was the absence of any fast food outlets or gas stations along this stretch of road. They were all up on the main highway, and there was nowhere at all for a ruined car's owners to take refuge until they crossed the bridge over the river and came to the town dock.

There was a restaurant there that Sabrina had always despised, although it was clean and bright, had a terrific view of the harbor, and served food that the townspeople and most tourists thoroughly enjoyed. On any other day, she would have shuddered at the thought of eating there, but she made no protest now as Max steered her towards it. Her spirits actually lifted when she saw its brightly-lit windows, and realized it was open. In all the years she'd been coming to this town, the Salty Dog tavern had never looked so good to her as it did now.

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The path Noah had taken was the right choice. Twenty minutes later, he was hurrying down Hill Street toward the park. As he crossed the road, he saw to his relief that Cat was still there, dancing from foot to foot, her arms wrapped around herself as if she was cold. Noah waved his own arms wildly, and started to run.

"Cat!"

"Noah!"

She ran, too. Then they stopped and looked each other over, suddenly almost shy.

Her dark hair under her pink-and-purple pom-pom hat was longer than he remembered. It curled up at the ends in a very un-pirate-like way. Her face seemed to have changed its shape somehow, and her brown cheeks were flushed with pink. Over them her eyes shone at him brightly. It suddenly struck him that she was pretty. He'd only ever thought that about his mother before, never a girl his own age. It made him feel awkward, as if he didn't know what to do with this new piece of information about his best friend.

His curly hair was shorter than the last time she'd seen him. Otherwise he looked just the same, except that his smile seemed more hesitant than usual. Wasn't he glad to see her? Cat had never been so glad to see anyone in her life. She had no idea why her stomach suddenly tightened, and her breathing went funny. This was Noah, her fellow-pirate and best friend. Wasn't it?

She shivered. And then Noah was talking, and his voice sounded just like himself, the same as ever.

"I've got something for you." And he was holding something out to her, and she was taking it, and it was her _book. _Her beloved _Swallows and Amazons, _that Mrs. Maxwell had snatched from her that morning. There was no mistaking that patched-together cover. But how had he got it?

He was grinning more widely now. Her heart leapt up when she saw the familiar dimples peeping out.

"How-where-?"

"I'll tell you all about it. I've got something else for you, too. If it hasn't broken; I hope it hasn't broken. It's in my pocket, and I went over the car seat and landed on that lady's lap and she grabbed for me and I had to get out of the car so fast I didn't remember to be careful of it. . . ."

His words were running together the way they always did when he was excited. Yes, this was Noah, not changed in any way that mattered. Cat beamed at him.

"I've got something for you, too." And then she shivered again.

Noah had worked hard on his hike, and had gotten so warm that even without his coat or hat he wasn't cold yet himself, but he didn't like to see Cat shivering like that.

"Come on," he said, "let's go somewhere and get warm."

And he put out his hand, the way he always had, and Cat took it, the way she'd been doing for years. Noah's family was a demonstrative one; he'd grown up holding hands and seeing hands held, and it had always been natural for him to take Sally's hand, or Cat's, when he wanted to steer them someplace. It felt a little different to both of them this time, but neither of them said anything about it, and after a minute the strange feeling left and they both were comfortable again.

"Where to?" she asked.

"The bakery. I've got some money I had left over from my birthday."

"Doubloons?"

His grin got wider.

"Gold moidores. I've got to get Sally some gingerbread, too, but there's plenty."

The bakery was toasty warm. Cat felt better once her hands were wrapped around a big paper cup of hot chocolate, and her pockets were full of warm gingerbread. She wiped some crumbs from her mouth-she'd already devoured one ginger lighthouse and a snowman-and realized something.

"Noah," she said, "where's the rest of your family?"

"It's kind of a long story."

"But-what about your agents? We couldn't do anything this summer because they were always there with you. Where are they now?"

"I got rid of them. Look, Cat, I've just thought-maybe this isn't the best place for us to be. Too many people are coming in; if someone recognizes me, they'll call my parents, and the agents will come for me and I'll have to go home. Let's find somewhere else where there aren't so many people."

"Back to the park?"

"Too cold."

"What about the library?"

"Perfect."

The library had always been one of Noah's and Cat's favorite places to meet, when they weren't playing on the beach. Not every small town had one, but Crabapple Cove had been a prosperous place a century ago, and Carnegie funds had helped. It had been on the brink of closing several times, but some of the town's wealthy summer community had taken an interest in it-not everyone was like the Maxwells-and it still served a number of villages along the coast.

A few years ago the librarians had followed a national trend and posted signs saying that food and drink were welcome. The librarian was helping an elderly man check out a large pile of books and videos, and get them bundled into his shopping bag. When the police talked to her later, she said she'd had no idea the President's son had been there; she'd never seen him come in.

The children spent a very happy hour stretched out by the fireplace, eating gingerbread and drinking their hot chocolate and catching up. Cat needed to hear all about how Noah had escaped from the Secret Service and how he came to have her book. Noah needed to find out why her book had been in the Jaguar, and who the crazy people were that he'd unintentionally hitched a ride with. And then there were their gifts to exchange.

Cat's was a small picture of a sailboat. She'd drawn and colored it herself, and framed it with popsicle sticks that she'd glued together and painted. She was good at drawing; Noah was impressed.

"I put _Amazon _on the end of the boat," she pointed out.

"It's really great." He was grinning in a way that meant something, but she didn't know what. "Open yours now."

She laughed when she unwrapped it. They'd both had the same idea, only Noah, who couldn't draw to save his life, had built Cat a model sailboat out of Lego. He'd gone through all his sets and taken some of his favorite spaceships apart to get the special pieces that would make it look right, so the hull actually curved smoothly, without the usual jagged Lego edges, and there was a mast and sail. He had wrapped it very carefully in tissues and a small cardboard box, and then wrapped that in Christmas wrap, and even tied a ribbon round it. Miraculously, the only thing that had broken off was the mast, which he was able to re-position quite easily.

"It's amazing," she said. "And you've written _Amazon _on the end, too!"

"The stern," he reminded her.

"How did you get the letters to stick?"

"Nail polish. I borrowed some of my mother's."

They grinned at each other happily. Beside them the fire danced. One of the richer supporters of the library, who liked to bring her grandchildren there when she came at Thanksgiving and Christmas, had paid to have a gas unit installed in the old fireplace so the room would be cozy in cold weather. She had never imagined that the son of the President of the United States and the daughter of an Hispanic domestic would spend one of the happiest hours of their lives talking and laughing quietly beside it-but since she was no Republican, she would have been delighted.

"But Noah," Cat finally said, "what are we going to do next summer? You can't pull that one off again. It wouldn't work a second time, and besides, there won't be any snow to sled on then."

Noah frowned. He hadn't thought about that. It was a good point.

"I'll think of something," he promised.

"And how are you going to get home now? You've got to get back before dinnertime, don't you?"

He hadn't thought about that, either. His plan had been to hitch a ride into the village with the agents, slip out of the car while they were in Starbucks and the grocery store, and then get back in it again before they drove home, which he'd assumed would be well before his mother called him to dinner.

There had been some loose ends in that scheme that he hadn't really given much thought to, such as how he would know when to get into the car and when the agents were going to leave, and what he would do if they didn't go back to the lighthouse before his mother went looking for him-but now he didn't have a car to get back into at all. That was a problem.

He could, of course, call home and ask someone to come and get him, but he still wanted to keep this whole adventure a secret. He really didn't want the agents to find out what he'd done-or his parents, either. He didn't want his mother to worry. And if his father ever found out . . . Noah squirmed a little at the thought of what he'd say. That was another of those things he hadn't thought about very carefully, though in this case he hadn't forgotten to think about it so much as he'd deliberately shut the thought out.

Cat saw his forehead scrunch up, and guessed what he was thinking.

"Maybe my mother can take you back," she suggested. "I'm supposed to call her soon, anyway."

Noah's face cleared.

"Great!" he said, cheerfully. "But there's something I've got to do first. I promised Sally I'd give her wish-list to Santa. She still believes in him, you know."

Cat smiled. She didn't know Sally very well but she liked what she knew of her, and she liked that Noah looked after her and remembered what he'd promised her.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go."

The librarian was busy at her desk, getting ready to close up. She was eager to get home. There had been a considerable debate about whether to keep the library open on Christmas Eve or not, but the committee had felt it would be a nice gift to the community, and she'd come in. There had actually been quite a few patrons through earlier in the day, so she didn't begrudge the time-but she didn't want to stay any later than she had to, either.

She looked up as she heard the children walk by. All she saw was the backs of a boy and a girl walking out together.

"Merry Christmas!" she called after them.

"Merry Christmas!" they called back.

On the steps outside, Cat paused and looked at Noah critically, then pulled off her hat and handed it to him.

"Here," she said. "Put this on. Pull it down over your forehead, and pull your scarf up over your mouth. That way people won't know it's you."

Noah nodded.

"Thanks," he said, and even though the hat was pink and purple, he put it on and pulled it down as low as it would go.

There was no point in getting caught now, and there did seem to be an unusual number of police cars out, cruising up and down the street and circling the square.

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High up in his look-out over the village, Reggie Morton looked at his watch. It would be dark in half an hour. A wave of disappointment, frustration, and anger swept over him.

Goddammit, it wasn't supposed to have been like this. They came this time every year. _Every year. _He'd read it on the internet, checked it out in a bunch of different places. He'd come days early, just in case, but he hadn't been discouraged when he didn't get his chance then. Today was supposed to be the day. Could he have missed something when he drove out to the gas station for that coffee and chaw a coupla hours ago? But he'd only been gone a few minutes. Surely he couldna missed the varmint then.

Goddammit, Goddammit, Goddammit. . . .

He was shaking with rage and cold. That would never do. He still had half an hour, after all. Maybe he'd better take another slug to warm himself up and calm his nerves.

His hand shook as he opened his flask, but it steadied as the heat coursed down his throat and through his veins. He picked up his binoculars again.

That varmint had better show up. He was the best shot in Chattahoochee County. It was Christmas, and someone had to save it.

To be cont'd. . . .


	13. Chapter 13

"That," Sabrina shrilled, "was the _worst _service I've ever had. The food took forever to come, and when it did it was stone cold, even the coffee. And that waitress never apologized once. All she said when we complained was, 'Do you want me to take it back, then?'" (Sabrina's voice went even higher in furious mockery.) "She didn't care at all. And then it took nearly as long to come the second time! My blood-sugar got so low I almost passed out. She couldn't even bring the _drinks _on time. And they were too warm, and my glass was dirty, and when the food did come it was too salty; I've never tasted anything so disgusting. . . ."

She'd been making the same complaint over and over for the past ten minutes.

"I'm sorry," the shift manager said, in a weary voice. "I've given you a 20% reduction for your inconvenience."

"The meal should be _free!"_

"The first serving _was _free. You ate the second."

"I had to _scrape _the salt off! You'd think someone had dumped a shaker over it on purpose."

"Forget it, Sabrina," Max grunted. "Our taxi's waiting, and I need to make some more calls about the car. There has to be _some _guy around here with a tow truck who'll come out on Christmas Eve."

As they swept out the door, she paused to announce loudly over her shoulder, "We're certainly never coming back to _this _dump again!"

"Thank God for that," the manager said-but not until the door had closed behind them. "What on earth happened there, Betty? They do something to annoy you?"

Betty was their best waitress. She'd been working there longer than he had, and had a reputation for unfailing cheerfulness, friendliness, and accuracy with the orders. He couldn't remember anyone ever making a complaint about her before.

"You could say that," she replied, flatly. "We don't need their type in here. You can take the first meal and the twenty-percent out of my wages."

The manager shook his head.

His nineteen-year-old son, who was learning the trade in the kitchen, grinned at the waitress as she went by and said, "Man, Betty, everyone always thinks you're the nicest person around, but I wouldn't want to get on your bad side."

"See you don't, then," she said with a wink, and picked up the plates for her next table.

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Rodney Parsons was having a great afternoon. Along with a bunch of his buddies from the Crabapple Cove Snowmobile Club, he had been tearing along the trails just south of Route 1. Now they were heading home. There was good powder along the side of the secondary road, and they were spread out wide, boondocking away. When they passed a red Jaguar, crumpled nose buried deep in a bank thrown up by the snowplow, Rodney threw back his head and laughed. Those city slickers with their sports cars had no idea how to drive in winter. He leaned forward and gunned it some more, sending up a wave of powder that showed what he thought of anyone who didn't ride a sled.

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Sometime between 3:30 and 4:00, Donna finished her wrapping and went looking for her children. She was surprised to find Sally asleep on her bed. She'd thought Sally had dropped her afternoon nap a year ago.

"Wake up, sweetie," Donna said tenderly, stroking her daughter's hair. "You want to be able to sleep tonight, or Santa won't come, you know."

Sally sat up at once and rubbed her eyes.

"Let's go find Noah and have some hot chocolate, shall we? And you can make those cookies with Granny and Grandma."

Sally scrambled out of bed and followed her mother happily. Noah must be back by now. There was the gingerbread he would have brought her, as well as her grandmothers' cookies, to look forward to.

But Noah's room was empty.

"He must be downstairs," Donna said, not at all concerned. But he wasn't downstairs-not in the kitchen, not in the living room, not in the dining room, not in the small guest room off the dining room, where Josh's mother was sitting in a comfortable chair, reading.

Donna ran back upstairs. He wasn't in the bathroom. He wasn't in her parents' room -where her father was stretched out taking a nap, while her mother was wrapping a few last small gifts at the table under the window. Donna double-checked his room, and Sally's. There was no sign of him anywhere at all.

"He must have gone outside again," she thought, and went to the front door to look out. No sign of him on the slope running up to the crest, either. But of course the agent by the door would know where he was.

"He went inside with Sally three hours ago, ma'am," the agent said. "He hasn't been outside since."

"But he isn't inside. I've looked everywhere!"

The agent blinked, just once. Then his phone was in his hand, and he was calling for a complete search of the property.

Five minutes later, he was calling Ron Butterfield.

"Drop the net," Ron said tersely, and started to run towards the Oval.

Minutes later, airports were being shut down, the Coast Guard was closing ports, State troopers were blocking highway entrances and exits, and every police officer up and down the coast was being called in to duty.

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Cruising along the stretch of secondary highway between Route 1 and Crabapple Cove, Tom Stephens, a state trooper, saw a Jaguar wrecked on the side of the road. It must have been there a couple of hours; it was covered in a light coating of snow. He called it in.

"Check it out," he was told.

Tom wiped away some of the snow from the driver's-side window and peered in. The car seemed empty, except for a child seat and a lot of shopping bags. The driver had obviously skidded on the ice, smashed the car up, and abandoned it. Cell-phone coverage was iffy here; he probably hadn't been able to reach AAA or a tow truck. Or maybe he just hadn't wanted to wait in the cold. It wasn't that far to the village, though it would be unusual for anyone who owned a Jag to want to do the hike on foot. But maybe there had been another car. . . .

Tom was a careful policeman. He walked around the car, looking for tracks. The snow was trampled down on the far side-there'd been a passenger, then-but he couldn't make out any details. If he'd been there an hour earlier, he would have seen the line of prints where Noah had run into the woods, but Rodney Parsons and his friends had flattened those out when they drove by.

Something caught Tom's eye, and he bent to pick it up. A knitted hat. Not very stylish, not the sort of thing Tom would have expected a passenger in a Jaguar to wear. It was small, too. A woman's? A child's? There was a child seat in the car, but that was for a smaller kid than one who could have worn this.

Tom was no expert in children's clothing, but he had nieces and nephews. At a guess he'd have said his sister's fourth-grader could have worn this hat. Or maybe the third-grader; it would be a little big on him, but not by much.

There was probably a perfectly natural explanation for it. The hat probably belonged to a third- or fourth-grader who'd been riding beside his mother or father in the front seat of the Jag instead of in back. That wasn't a smart place to let a child that age sit, but plenty of people did it.

If this had been any ordinary day, Tom wouldn't have paid the hat any more attention. But this wasn't an ordinary day, and Tom wasn't taking any chances: he switched on his radio, and called it in.

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Donna had been waiting on hold for what seemed like forever. Then, when she'd heard Josh's voice at last, she'd fallen apart.

She'd been beside herself, torn to shreds by terror: for Noah, her baby, lost and frightened and in who-knew-what kind of danger, who-knew-what condition or pain, who-knew-whether-no, she couldn't let herself go there, couldn't let herself think that. But part of her terror was also for herself, because she knew that there was no way on earth she could possibly go on living without him. And another part was for Josh, who couldn't live without him either, of course.

She knew Josh cared about his children every bit as much as she did. She could feel his anguish coming at her over the line, even though anyone who didn't know him as well as she did might have thought his voice was remarkably steady and calm. Her guilt at doing this to him, at being the one who'd been at home, the one who should have been watching, should have been keeping him safe, was overwhelming.

But then something had happened. The whole tone of the conversation had shifted, and Josh suddenly sounded excited, eager, almost-happy.

"Donna," he'd said, "put Sally on the phone."

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Sally came reluctantly, but she came. She'd been holed up in her room with the covers pulled over her head and only-because she couldn't breathe if she was completely underneath them-her face peeking out, and she'd been screaming at her mother to _Go away! Go away, go away, go away! _But when Donna opened the door one more time and said, firmly, "Sally, Daddy wants to talk to you," she stopped mid-scream.

"Daddy's here?" she asked, not sure whether that was a good thing or a bad one, but knowing that it mattered. Daddy was a different kind of force in her life than Mommy was. Her mother was always there-she scheduled her First Lady meetings for times when Sally and Noah were at school, or at their after-school activities-but her father wasn't able to spend as much time with her, so his presence had more impact. She saw him at bedtime almost every day-it was their special time together, and her favorite hour of the day-but she hadn't seen him yesterday or today at all. She wanted to see him desperately, but she was also a bit afraid to. She couldn't drive Daddy away by screaming at him. He was always harder to get around than Mommy was, harder to ignore.

"Daddy's on the phone. He needs to talk to you _now." _

Sally climbed reluctantly out from the covers, and followed her mother to her parents' bedroom and the phone.

"Sally," Josh said. "You know Noah isn't there."

"Yes," she said, after a moment's pause. She didn't like talking on the telephone much, but she was used to doing it with Daddy when he had to be away.

"It's important that we find him, Sally. It isn't safe for him to be outside without his agents."

Sally nodded. She knew that. But of course, Noah _was _with his agents-he'd told her how he was planning to get in the car with them, without their knowing. And after that he'd be in the village, their own village where they'd been going all their lives, where they knew everyone and everyone knew them. That was just as safe as being with the agents, he'd told her, and anyway, they wouldn't be far away-they'd just be at Starbucks, where they always went on their breaks in the summer, and then in the grocery store, which they usually did, too. That was really just as good as having them right there with him, and it would let him go see Santa in the park, and get the gingerbread.

"Sally? Did you hear me?"

"Yes."

"We have to find him. And I know you know where he is, Sally-girl. You told the agents you last saw him outside the shed."

"Ye-es."

"That wasn't quite true, was it?"

Sally was silent.

"Or maybe I should say, it was true, but it wasn't the whole truth?"

Sally swallowed. She had promised Noah. But she couldn't lie to Daddy. Or to Mommy, either, which was why she had screamed at her. . . .

"Sally, Noah didn't come down on the sled with you for that last run, I know that. He never shares a sled with you if he can help it, and he knows he's always supposed to be on top if you do share, to keep you from falling off. The agents said they saw you on top. But you weren't, were you? You came down alone. With his coat and hat under you, to make it look like there were two of you. What I need to know is, where did you leave him? And what was he going to do?"

More silence.

"Sally, I know Noah's told you not to tell. But it's not telling when I already know. So I want you to answer me. Now."

"It's all right," she blurted out. "He went with the agents, in their car. They didn't know he was there, but he was still with them, so we didn't do anything wrong. He had to get to the village. There wasn't any other way to see Santa and tell him what we wanted."

Josh put his hand over the mouthpiece and called out, "_Margaret!_ Cancel that call to Fitzwallace, and get Butterfield on the phone. He's probably at Andrews by now; I want to catch him before he takes off. . . ."

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Special Agents Rawlings and Catalano-sometimes known as Calvin and Hobbes-were barrelling along the highway towards Crabapple Cove when the second call came in. The first had told them that Flashlight was missing, Operation French was cancelled, and they should return to base immediately. The second caused Gary Rawlings to slam on the brakes and pull the Suburban abruptly over to the side of the road. Meg Catalano jumped out and tore around to the back of the car while Rawlings popped the trunk open. Nothing there. Then the back door. A minute later she was back in her seat, the blanket Noah had hidden under in her hand.

"Confirmed," she told the base agent. "Flashlight's been in the car. At least, someone has. He must have gotten out at the inn."

"How the hell did he _do _that?" Rawlings muttered, as he spun the car around 180 degrees and headed back towards the inn. "It was locked, wasn't it?"

She nodded, her mind racing. A picture surfaced: Noah sitting in the front seat playing with the ignition key and the locks, while she sat beside him showing him some of the ways the SUV had been modified by the Service to meet its security requirements.

"Crap," she said. "That kid is way smarter than I realized."

"His parents aren't any slouches."

"But what's he doing back at the inn? They said he wanted to go to see Santa in the village."

"You wouldn't think a kid as bright as that would even believe in Santa still."

"He must have some other game in mind. . . ."

The radio flared into life again. Rawlings listened, then slammed on the brakes and spun the Suburban another 180 again. With his foot to the floor, they shot off to join the swarm of other agents, troopers, and local police who were descending _en masse _on Max and Sabrina's oceanfront estate.

The state trooper had snapped a photo of the hat he'd found beside the Jag and sent it in to headquarters, who had forwarded it to the Secret Service base at the lighthouse. Donna and her mother had identified it immediately: Mrs. Moss had knitted it for Noah that fall. IDing the owners of the Jag from their license plate and looking up their address in Maine was a matter of seconds.

Sabrina Maxwell's really bad day was about to get a whole lot worse.

To be cont'd. . . .


	14. Chapter 14

Author's note: My apologies for the despicable ethnic slurs in this chapter. No, I would never say those things myself, but since Reggie would, they're here.

Chapter 14:

As Noah and Cat came down the library steps, they saw one squad car after another driving slowly along the street. Noah had always loved watching police, but he pulled his scarf a little higher and Cat's hat a little lower, and made himself turn away so his face wouldn't show.

"Think they're looking for you?" Cat asked.

"Nah."

But Noah wasn't feeling as confident as he sounded. If they _were _looking for him, it meant his absence from home had been noticed. If that were the case, he was in big trouble. Actually, he was starting to realize that he was going to be in big trouble anyway. Even if his absence hadn't been noticed yet, and even if Cat's mother did give him a ride home, how would he get past the agents at the gate? They'd never let the car in; they didn't know Cat was his friend.

Nobody knew she was his friend. Oh, his mother had seen them playing together on the beach plenty of times, of course, but she didn'tknow Cat-didn't know where she lived, didn't know what she was like or what he liked about her, didn't know how important a friend she was. He didn't know why, exactly, but he liked it that way. Cat was his secret. That was why he'd gone to all this trouble to see her without anyone knowing, instead of just asking his mother if she could come over to play.

His secretiveness about her had nothing whatever to do with the kind of reasons people like the Maxwells, if they had known about it, would have assumed. Some of his parents' closest friends were working people in the village; it would never have crossed Noah's mind that there was any reason not to be friends with the child of a nanny or a maid.

Noah just liked secrets. Even when he was much younger, he had liked making his own plans to meet Cat without any input from his mother. He liked not having to answer questions about what they were going to do-not that they ever did anything she would have disapproved of, but their imaginary games of camping and sailing and exploring and piracy felt more real to him when he didn't have to describe them to anyone afterwards. And he liked the feeling that Cat belonged to him alone, that he didn't have to share her with anyone else, not even his mother or his sister.

Especially not his sister. He'd made it very clear to Sally that she wasn't to come trailing after him when he was with Cat. The size of the rocks they scrambled up on the beach had made it easy to keep away from her, though Sally was in fact sufficiently devoted to him that she accepted her exclusion without much resentment. Noah was her god; whatever he wanted was what she wanted to do.

Without that devotion, Noah would never have been able to slip away unnoticed. He'd been very pleased with himself about that plan and the way he'd brought it off. But now he was in a fix, and he had no idea how he was going to get out of it.

Still, he had gotten out of plenty of other fixes before. If he just kept his head down so the police in those cars didn't recognize him, and if he just _thought _hard enough, he was sure he could come up with some way to make this adventure turn out right.

In the back of his mind he could hear a voice that was very like his father's saying, "Your mother was _worried_, Noah! You shouldn't have left in the first place. And once you guessed she'd found out and the police were looking for you, you should have called home so she'd know you were all right." But Noah didn't want to listen to that voice. He wanted to figure out a way to save his plan.

Getting Sally's list to Santa seemed like a good way to allow himself a little more time to think. Of course the man in the red suit in the bandstand wasn't really Santa Claus, because there wasn't any Santa Claus, and his seeing Sally's list wouldn't make the slightest difference to what Sally got in her stocking tomorrow morning, so it didn't really matter whether Noah got it to him or not. But Noah needed the time, and he _had _promised Sally he'd do it. He was really very fond of his little sister, even if he didn't want her in the way when he was with Cat; he didn't want to break a promise to her, or to have to pretend he'd kept one when he hadn't.

So he kept his head down, and walked briskly with Cat toward the park.

When they got there, they joined the line of families who were still waiting to see Santa. It was starting to get dark. The sun had already slipped behind the big hill to the west, but there was light in the sky still, and the park lamps hadn't come on yet. A few snowflakes fluttered by. Cat shivered. The wind was picking up, and it was already ten degrees colder than it had been when they'd gone into the library.

Suddenly the shriek of a siren split the air. Cat and Noah jumped, then watched with fascination as a long line of cruisers turned on their flashers and sped along Main Street and out of town.

"Wonder what _that _was all about?" Noah said, when the street was quiet again.

"Do-don't-know." Cat was shivering convulsively. Noah looked at her with concern.

"Do you want to go wait someplace warm while I do this?" She shook her head.

"I'm-fine."

"Take this back"-Noah pulled her hat off and handed it to her-"And this," and he started to unwrap his scarf so she could have that as well.

"_No, Noah," _she hissed. "You need them."

"No, I don't," he whispered back. "The cops are all gone, and it's getting dark."

"What about all these people here?"

"What about them? They're too busy with their kids to notice us. Nobody's even looking."

It was true; nobody was. The parents in the line were much too busy trying to quiet their screaming babies and keep their over-excited toddlers from running completely out of control to think about anything else. None of them so much as glanced at the boy and girl waiting together with no adult beside them.

"Anyway," Noah said firmly, "you're _too cold. _Put these on _now." _

He wasn't Josh's son or Donna's for nothing. Pirate though she was, Cat gave in and put on the hat and scarf.

They helped, but not enough. Five minutes later she was shivering again. Noah, remembering what his father always did when his mother felt cold, put his arm around her and pulled her close against him.

"Th-thanks," she whispered.

"You sure you don't want to go to the bakery to warm up?"

She shook her head. "We're almost there."

And then the park lights came on.

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Up in his look-out on the hill behind the town, Reggie Morton was about to call it quits. The light was almost gone. He was cold and angry. He'd come all this way, waited all this time freezing his balls off in this god-damned frigid place, and his target had never shown up. He was going to have to pack it in and go home without his trophy. He hadn't saved Christmas after all.

He was just about to put his binoculars away and pack up his things, when down in the park he'd been watching all afternoon the lights came on.

And right there, right in his view, he saw a face that looked so familiar he thought for a moment his target had come at last. He was so excited he almost stopped breathing. Then he realized it was just a kid, and the disappointment hit him so hard his eyes teared up. He put the binoculars down to wipe them, and reached for his flask. If ever a guy deserved a bellyful of good whiskey, it was him and it was now.

But the flask had only just touched his lips when it hit him who the kid must be. He'd seen pictures, lots of them. If he hadn't been so cold his brain was half-froze, he'd have known who it was right away.

He hadn't meant to go after a child. But this was _his _child, that guy who'd got those heathen candle-sticks stuck up in the White House alongside the good Christian Christmas trees, the guy who didn't think "Merry Christmas" was good enough for the White House cards anymore, but had "Happy Holidays" on them instead. That was what all those pretty gals on TV had been saying. And that guy wasn't even white; he was a Jew, which wasn't the same thing at all, even if it looked it. He'd lied and cheated his way to the White House, and now he was making a war on Christmas. Sean Hannity had said so. And Rush Limbaugh, and all the rest of 'em. And here was his kid, right here in front of Reggie, looking so much like his daddy anyone could see he'd be just the same kind of trash when he grew up.

What's more, this kid had his arm around a girl with awfully dark skin. She didn't look like she was just a nice white gal with a tan. A nigger? No, a spic. Prob'ly an illegal at that, a tunnel rat. Any boy who would touch her was a rat himself. And he was half a Jew. Varmints, both of 'em. . . .

Reggie could feel that righteous anger boiling up in him. No, he hadn't come to take a kid. But he'd been waiting too long to leave with nothing.

He dropped down beside the Barrett. Its long sniper's snout peered out from the bushes, sinister and deadly. He got the little varmints in his scope. He didn't have a silencer, but at this distance he could take 'em both and still make his getaway.

Which one first-the spic, or the Jew?

He made his choice, and pulled the trigger.

To be cont'd. . . .


	15. Chapter 15

Note: You know how I feel about feedback, guys. I don't know if I can finish this story off without more of it. . . .

Chapter 15:

The taxi pulled into the driveway of the Maxwells' ocean-front estate. Max paid the driver, climbed out, and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. Raising his eyes, he saw that it belonged to a man in uniform. Police. What kind, he wasn't sure.

"Put your hands up and turn around!" the cop ordered. Max obeyed.

"Lean against the car." Max did. The main thought running through his mind as the cop frisked him was which of several projects he had on the go had just gone south.

Sabrina, who was still extracting her long Russian-sable cape from other side of the taxi, hadn't even noticed. She looked up to see a dozen armed men surrounding the car, their guns pointed at her, and screamed.

"I want my lawyer," Max said over his shoulder.

"This is a matter of national security," the officer snapped. "What have you done with the boy?"

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Betty had wiped down her last table at the Salty Dog and signed out for the day. She was pulling herself up Main Street again, on her way to collect her father from the park. She wanted to get him home to change before the carol sing at church and the supper after.

She was smiling a little. Her manager had asked more questions, but once she'd mentioned her friend who worked for the Maxwells and the way they treated her and her little girl, he said he'd have wanted to do the same thing. He wouldn't let her pay for the extra meal or the discount. Just don't do it again when he was around, and don't put anything worse than salt on the food. She'd said she had no intention of doing anything like that again, as long as that pair didn't put in another appearance at one of her tables-and she felt pretty comfortably sure they weren't going to do that.

Yes, her feet were starting to ache and her back hurt a bit, but she was lucky to have a job in a place like that, she thought. Folks there acted like family-most of the time, anyway. Not everyone she knew could say the same. She couldn't imagine _not _working at The Salty Dog-not yet, anyway.

Josh had offered to get her a better job any number of times, but she'd always turned him down. Her friends thought she was crazy, but she was like her dad, she liked to feel like she was earning what she had, and she wanted to go on feeling that way for as long as she could. A better job would have to be out of the Cove, too, and she couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Too stuck in a rut and too independent-minded for her own good, probably, but that was the way it was. She wouldn't be comfortable any other way.

Still, she couldn't say she was angry with Josh for not taking no for an answer. He always left ridiculously large tips-or had, before the election, when he'd still been able to come to the Salty Dog without the Secret Service having to clear the place out first. And that last time, when he'd put that note in with the bills saying he and Donna had set up an account at the Cove-Maritime Bank in her name, and it was there for her anytime she got tired of this and wanted to give herself a break. . . .

Betty still teared up a little when she thought of that. She had no intention of using the money, not yet, not while she didn't have to-but it was nice to know it was there, she had to admit that. Nicer to know they cared enough to do it. Josh always said it was the other way round, that _she'd _looked after him when he'd needed it, but that was nonsense. She hadn't done anything for him; he'd done it all for them. For her father. For Joe.

Betty wiped her eyes, and pulled herself up that last bit of the hill. She'd just stop in at the church for a moment, see how the preparations for the supper were getting on, and then she'd go collect her dad. He'd stay in the park all night if she didn't, talking to the little kiddies, for all the fuss he'd made about putting that suit on.

000000

Sid Baker wasn't a natural Santa Claus. But Jerry Dean, who always did it, was down with the flu, Bart Smith's wife had had a bad fall and needed him at home, and Dan McFarlane was visiting his kids in Portland, so the Lions had called up Sid. He was glad to help out, but he didn't think he fit the role all that well. Even the padded suit couldn't make his lean frame look fat, and he was too reserved to be comfortable trying to seem jolly.

"You just be yourself, Dad," his daughter had said. "The kids will love you."

That was Betty all over, he thought: she never could see straight about anyone she cared for. He thought the kids would be scared of him. Kids who didn't know him often were at first; he was a serious-seeming man who didn't take any guff from anybody, and didn't care much for the modern style of letting children just run wild and do whatever they liked without having to quiet down and listen, and do what the grown-ups needed them to do once in a while.

Which didn't mean he didn't like kids; he did. He just wasn't the natural Santa Claus type, joking and jolly and knowing all about the latest toys and video games. Sid didn't think too much of video games, actually. He sometimes wondered how the boys were going to turn out, all these games and no real work to turn their hands to. He'd started on his father's boat when he was about the size of some of these little ones lining up to see Santa today.

Of course, there wasn't much work of that kind around here anymore, and what were the kids to do? Sid still took tourists out on the _Mary B. _in the summers, but he didn't fish much anymore. The fisheries were in bad shape, and getting what there was took a younger man than he was now.

Josh had tried any number of times to find ways to make up for that. He always dressed it up by saying Sid would be doing him a favor if he'd just do such-and-such, made it look like the money would be earned fair-and-square. Sid always said no, thank-you. He could smell charity a mile away and he wasn't having any of it, even though he was touched by the younger man's concern, and pleased by his tact in never offering the money directly. Not to Sid, anyway. He knew about Betty's tips, had guessed about the account, and of course there was Joe. But that was different. He didn't begrudge his daughter or his grandson anything. He was grateful to Josh for wanting to take care of them.

As for himself and Mary, he'd made a nice bit from that movie-they'd filmed parts of it in the village, and paid him a ridiculous amount for letting them use the _Mary B._-and more still from the tourists who'd come to Crabapple Cove afterwards just to see where it had all happened, and who wanted to go out on his boat because of it. So he was doing fine. Not fishing had its advantages: he had more time now to help out with things around the village. What with the Lion's Club and the projects they got going, and the ones at the church and the school, there was always something to do, even in the winter. He was playing the fiddle more these days, too. He and some of the boys got together a couple of times a week and played up a storm. Sid never cracked a smile when he was playing: he'd close his eyes and his face would get as still as if it was carved out of wood, but his fingers would be flying, and the music would make the whole room get up and dance.

But today he'd been out in the park, filling in for Jerry Dean as Santa Claus so the children wouldn't be disappointed. It was getting dark now, and most of the families had gone home to dinner. Betty would be coming along soon.

He peered out into the gathering shadows. Yes, just a few more families to go.

Then the lights came on.

Sid heard the shot, and frowned. Some fool up in the woods. You could hunt coyote for half an hour after sunset, or raccoon, but Sid didn't like it, not so close to town, not when it would be getting too dark up there to see clearly. That was how accidents happened.

He remembered that Joe was up in the woods today, and felt a little prickle of concern. It only lasted a moment, though. Joe knew what he was doing. He was probably home by now, anyway. He was still on nights; he had to be down at the station in another hour or so.

000000

Joe McCarthy-who was no relation whatever to the infamous senator-had hiked into the woods with his shotgun shortly after lunch. He'd been hoping to bag a grouse or two, maybe even a pheasant-there were open stretches of marsh and meadow scattered all through the forest above Crabapple Cove, and in the open highlands beyond. He hadn't had any luck, but he didn't really care. His sister was visiting from Bangor with her kids, and fond though he was of them all, after a few hours he was always looking for excuses to get out of the house.

There'd been a fresh fall of snow last night, the air was crisp and cold, and it felt good just to be out in the woods stretching his legs for a while before he had to report in for duty that evening.

Joe had always thought he'd be a fisherman, like his grandfather, but time hadn't been kind to the fisheries. It was getting harder and harder to get by the old way, and while his Gramps still did all right taking tourists out whale-watching in the summer, everyone who had had anything to do with Joe for the past few years had gone out of their way to point out to him that it would be a good idea to find another way to make a living.

Fortunately, there was something else he'd thought he'd like to do. The most thrilling events his town had ever known had happened nine years ago, right down on the town dock in front of the _Mary B. _In the first few days afterwards, Joe had just been excited watching the video of the standoff between Josh and Cliff Calley that the village webcam had picked up and relayed all over the world. After a while, though, it had begun to sink in on him that Josh had very nearly been killed that night. And Josh had already become something more than just an ordinary friend to Joe.

The twelve-year-old boy hadn't been able to articulate what he really felt about the older man, but the twenty-one-year-old that Joe was now realized that Josh Lyman had stepped into his life not long after his own father had stepped out of it, and had taken on some of the heroic glamour that a different kind of father would have had in a twelve-year-old boy's eyes.

When it first occurred to Joe that Cliff Calley had been trying to kill Josh that night and had very nearly succeeded, all he could think of was that he should have been there doing something to stop it. It ate him up that he hadn't been. He spent hours and hours replaying the scene on the dock in his mind, imagining ways he could have made it come out better.

He hadn't really fallen asleep in the restaurant; he'd gone to see why Josh was taking so long, he'd seen what was happening, he'd jumped Cliff Calley from behind and brought him down. Or maybe he'd used a boathook, or lassooed him with an anchor rope. Sometimes Joe had a shotgun or a pistol with him, and he told Calley to drop the gun and put his hands in the air. He liked that one quite a bit: his voice sounded deeper than usual, with a lot of authority in it, and he could almost see the moonlight glinting off the badge on his chest.

There was one fantasy, too, in which he actually shot the guy, but that wasn't really a version he felt comfortable with. Josh had talked to him about guns and vigilantes and why it wasn't a good thing to take the law into your own hands. Better leave that for the cops, he'd said, and Joe-who would listen to anything Josh told him-listened and agreed.

Joe's real dad came and went. Things would start off well at first, but after a while he always ended up hitting Betty again. The last time it happened, Joe ran downstairs, dragged him off her, punched him in the face, and kicked his sorry ass out of the house, yelling that if he ever came within a mile of them again he'd call the cops.

That was before he went off to the Academy. He still wished it had happened later, when he could have thrown the bastard in the lockup himself.

He could do that now. The course had cost $9,000. Josh had paid it, over Sid's protests and objections. "I wouldn't be where I am now if it weren't for you and your family," he'd told the old man bluntly. "You helped me out when I needed it. Let me help now."

And because it was for Joe, not himself, Sid hadn't been able to say no.

Josh was the reason there'd been a job waiting in Crabapple Cove for Joe afterwards, too, though he hadn't had to pull any strings to get it for him. Having the President of the United States as a part-time resident meant that a lot more visitors were pouring into the village, and the town council had had to vote money for more police to keep things under control.

Joe lived at home. He was fine with that; he didn't have a girlfriend right now. He was shy around girls, and choosy, and didn't want to get himself in too deep with the wrong one. His grandmother still made the best pies in the world, and in the summers he still went out with his grandfather on the _Mary B. _whenever he could.

But the _Mary B. _was in dry-dock for the winter now. It was Christmas Eve, and Joe wanted to get out of the house, so he'd taken his shotgun and gone for a walk in the woods.

By four o'clock, though, the light was getting dim. Joe was already heading back when the first call came in. He put his head down, and started to run.

He let himself ease up a little after the second call, but not much. There wasn't any way he could get out to Ocean Front Drive to help bust those bastards, even if the Sargeant would have let him, but he wasn't going to shilly-shally around getting out of the woods while Noah Lyman was in trouble.

Joe was known around the village as a laid-back guy who always kept his cool, but as he jogged down the wooded trails his hands were clenched with a fury he hadn't felt since he'd pulled his dad off his mother and smashed his face in. He had to find Josh's son. He had to. And when he did, the other cops had better be there, too. Because if Joe was left alone with the monsters who'd taken him, he didn't think he'd be able to answer for what he'd do.

The shot barely registered with him. His whole attention was focused on getting down off that hill so he could help find Noah Lyman.

To be cont'd. . . .


	16. Chapter 16

Note: My thanks to everyone who's been sending in comments. Really, it makes all the difference. I'm sorry this one has taken a while to write, but it's been a crazy few days here; it was only the feedback that spurred me on to keep working on this at all. Thank you!

Chapter 16:

For just a moment, when the lights came on, Noah froze. Then he remembered that the police were gone, and most of the people in line, too. There was only one more family ahead of them, on the steps of the bandstand, and another behind-and they were completely preoccupied with a pair of screaming toddlers and a baby. He was fine.

Then he looked up and caught a glimpse of Santa's face.

He jumped back, pulling Cat with him, putting one of the pillars of the bandstand and the tarpaulin curtain it held up between himself and the old man. He moved so fast he slipped a little on the ice, and grabbed with one hand at the pillar to steady himself. The other hand was still tightly around Cat's shoulders.

As his hand touched the iron pillar, he felt a terrific shock up his other arm, the one that was holding Cat. He let out a squeak of pain. Cat cried out at the same moment.

"Are-you okay?" he asked her, feeling a little dizzy but not wanting her to know it. His arm was hurting like anything. He didn't understand why it wasn't the one he'd touched the pillar with.

"I'm-okay," she said, shivering again. "What happened?"

"I touched the pillar. It's metal. We must have got a shock from it."

"Why did you jump like that first?"

"I know that man. The one playing Santa. I didn't want him to recognize me."

"He's just finishing with that family. It's our turn."

"You take it, Cat. I've known him all my life. He'll know me for sure."

Noah dug in his pocket with his good hand. The other one felt strange and numb, except for the fire that was burning down it. He was embarrassed by the way he felt. It was only a shock, and he was supposed to be a sturdy pirate. He didn't want Cat to know how much it was hurting him still.

"Here it is."

Cat walked shakily up the steps towards Santa. She didn't want Noah to know how strange she felt. She was embarrassed by the way she'd gotten so cold, shivering, needing her hat back, and then his scarf, and his arm around her, even. She was supposed to be a pirate, and pirates were supposed to be strong and brave. And now this. . . .

She stumbled on the second step, but pulled herself up again. Then Santa was there, coming down the steps towards her. She held out Sally's list to give him. Her hand was shaking. She felt so strange. And what was that, on the pale-pink sleeve of her coat, and on the paper. . . .

000000

Sid Baker saw the child stumble. Where were her parents? She seemed to be alone, and she didn't look well. He got out of his chair and moved, as quickly as the ridiculous suit would let him, towards her.

She was holding something out to him. Her hand was shaking like a leaf. He could see the paper shaking. And, staining it and her sleeve. . . .

"_Child!" _he cried, and took the last two steps towards her in a single stride.

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"Godfuckit!" Reggie was so angry he swore out loud, something he rarely did.

He'd missed. The god-damned-fucking little varmint had jumped aside just as he'd shot.

Reggie couldn't see him clearly anymore, just a hint of a form in the shadows on the far side of the pavilion's steps, but he was pretty sure the brat was on his feet. The girl, too. Godfuckit, godfuckit, godfuckit. . . .

Nobody seemed to have noticed the shot, though. That was one good thing. He took a long, deep breath to calm himself and peered down his scope into the shadows. If he could just get his aim straight. . . .

Then he paused. Someone was moving.

It was the girl, walking back to the steps, back into the light.

Reggie couldn't really distinguish the boy's form from the shadows beyond the steps. The girl was a good, clear target now. She stumbled-good thing he hadn't shot then. Now she was on her feet again, and Santa was coming down the steps towards her. That meant she'd be standing there for a minute, at least, while she reeled off her list. The greedy little bitch. Hadn't she taken enough from this country already?

But the President was the one he really wanted, and the boy was the President's son. Should he take a chance on it? Or go for the sure thing?

For just a second Reggie hesitated, his eye pressed to the scope, his finger tightening on the trigger.

To be cont'd. . . .


	17. Chapter 17

Note: I'm sorry about the very short chapters, guys. I should have waited until this one was ready before posting the other.

Chapter 17:

Joe wished he knew what was going on. Had they found Noah? He thought the station would have put the word out if they had. There hadn't been any more news since the call for all available officers to turn out to an address on Ocean Front Drive. All he could do now was run, so he kept running.

Not many people came along here. It wasn't the usual road folks from the village took up into the woods, which was why Joe liked it. Today was the first time he'd been able to get up here all week. He'd been too busy: the department had had warnings from the Secret Service about threats to the President this holiday, and they'd doubled-up on the patrols in the village in response, even though the Service had cancelled the Lymans' usual Christmas Eve trip to see Santa in the park.

As he came down the hill, Joe could see the line of his own boot tracks coming towards him. Then another set of tracks appeared, smaller ones-a woman's, probably-coming up the other way, from the highway. They turned east at the same place Joe was going. They were new since he'd come by this way earlier.

A small part of his thought noted the tracks, but he didn't give them much attention at first.

Then he saw the truck. It hadn't been there, either, when he'd come up the trail from Hill Street earlier that afternoon. It was an odd place for someone to park, almost hidden in the brush like that.

He looked at the plates. Out-of-state, Georgia. That was a long way for someone to come just to drive into the woods above Crabapple Cove at Christmastime. And where was the driver? The trail Joe had just come down was the obvious place to hike or hunt, but no one had gone up it that day except himself.

Desperate though he was to get down to the station, all Joe's newly-trained police instincts-and a lot of natural, local-boy ones, too-were starting to prickle.

He walked around the truck. Some of those smaller tracks were there, too. And there were tracks on the other side: a man's big boots heading up the trail towards Lookout Rock, and the smaller ones beside them.

Local boys sometimes took their girls up to the Lookout after school or in the summer. Occasionally an artist would find the spot and work there; it had a great view of the harbor. But nobody went there in the winter. It was too cold for painting then, and the woods fell away below the rock too sharply to get a bead on anything more than a crow or a squirrel.

If you were looking for that kind of small game you'd do better up the way Joe had just been. The Lookout certainly wasn't a place to find the bigger stuff-deer, moose, bear, which were out of season now, anyway. But there had been that shot a few moments ago.

Joe looked back at the truck. This time he saw the stickers. "Lick Lyin' Lyman." "Stop the War on Christmas."

He pulled the shotgun off his shoulder and started running up the trail towards the Lookout.


	18. Chapter 18

Note: Another of these really short chapters, guys. But we're getting there. . . .

Chapter 18:

Josh said goodbye to Ron Butterfield, and put the phone down.

"Sam," he said. "Get the others in here."

Sam stepped back into his office, and nodded C.J., Toby, and Danny into the Oval.

Josh was standing behind the desk of the Presidents, the Resolute, fidgeting with a binder clip he'd picked up. He was snapping the handles back and forth without looking at them. His eyes were on the cluster of framed photos on the desktop. He looked up when the others came in, but said nothing.

They watched his face, waiting. He swallowed, hard. Then he looked down at the binder clip, and up again.

"I'm going to Andrews," he said. "Sam'll bring you up to date. We think Noah left of his own accord. We're not looking at a rogue-agent scenario for the time being, so I've called off Fitzwallace and the Marines. We've closed local airports, harbors, and highways around the area. I don't want to brief the press yet, though, Danny. Not till we know more."

Danny nodded.

"I'm sorry about this. I know you've all got plans for the holidays. . . ."

Josh's voice trailed off. He rarely felt Presidential-his thought from the start had been that the only way to get through this job he'd been asked to do would be to check his ego at the door and focus on the work and his team-but he'd never felt less like a Commander-in-Chief than he did now.

"Don't be ridiculous," Toby growled.

"Let us come with you," C.J. said, warmly.

"Yeah," Danny said. "We can do the statement from there, when the time comes."

Toby nodded. Josh swallowed again and cleared his throat, which felt suddenly husky.

"You don't have to. We can do it by phone. And there's really no need for the Secretary of State to be part of this at all, C.J. But thanks for the offer; I appreciate it."

"Of course we're coming." Sam looked a little baffled. It actually hadn't occurred to him that they wouldn't be. "You might need us. We have to be there."

"But your families. . . ."

"Are your family, too. They'll understand."

Josh's face twisted. C.J. put a hand on his arm.

"Let's go," she said, simply. "Donna's waiting for you."

And for all the emotion he was struggling to keep in check, Josh felt a weight shifting off his shoulders.

His team was with him. None of them would ever have acted like this with Jed Bartlet. He didn't suppose any staff the White House had ever seen had been this close or this informal with the President. It was a different kind of presidency he was running, all right, but it worked, for them and for him. They couldn't have done it any other way.

To be cont'd. . . .


End file.
